Melbourne, FL - The story so far

I'm into my 2nd day here in Melbourne, Florida (Saturday) to run my half-marathon, which is tomorrow. The flight in was smooth, and uneventful. The weather has been cool here, with temps in the upper 50's yesterday, and a little warmer today. The sun's been trying to peek out of the clouds all day today.



On my way to the hotel from the airport, I crossed over one of the inter-coastal bridges that make up the marathon and half-marathon route. I was shocked! The bridges are huge, and quite impressive. The rest of the course seems to be rather flat. The bridges are going to be the highlight of the run, I think. I'm hoping my knee holds up on them, but I've set aside some bio-freeze to deal with the pain, if it decides to show itself :)

Today I took a walk through Melbourne's historic district, and jumped into a couple of surf shops. Besides the runners, there aren't many people out and about. My guess is that's it's a little too cool, or maybe it's just February. The beach has been mostly empty. I'm not complaining about the weather- it's sooo nice to NOT be around snow and 20F degree temps for a change.

So the race is tomorrow (Sunday). I'm going to do the best I can. The scenery looks very nice throughout the route. This is the debut for this race here in Melbourne, but it appears to be nicely organized so far. I ran two miles on Friday down the street from my hotel, and my knee held up okay, but it's not 100% yet.

Check out photos from my trip on my Flickr here, or my usual chatter over at Twitter.



Happy running. See you all on the flipside of 13.1!