State #47, Tobacco Road Half Marathon, Cary, NC, 3/15/20, Part 1

I was a bit worried going in to this race due to a really sore right glute muscle I’d been nursing for a few weeks. I think I overtrained the past couple of months and it manifested itself in my butt. I guess there’s worse injuries I could’ve incurred, but it really has been a royal pain in the you-know-what! After a much needed visit to the massage therapist things improved, but I still erred on the side of caution and did a hard taper the two weeks before the race. I mostly worked on getting some outdoor walks in along with the Dynamix routine on the P90X3 DVD workout series. Those measures, along with becoming BFFs with my foam roller, helped very much. I still had some achieness back there, but not nearly as painful as the previous weeks had been. 

So the butt pain ended up being the least of my worries for this trip. I was set to fly to Raleigh-Durham (NC) for the Tobacco Road Half Marathon to be held in Cary, NC. I planned to get together with old friends of ours, Douglas and Lynn Solomon, who recently moved to Durham. I was so looking forward to seeing them and having a look around their new city. My flight was on Friday, March 13th, but then on Thursday the 12th, I received a message from the race director saying the race was canceled due to Coronavirus concerns. I was certainly disappointed, but completely understood, considering the growing spread of this strange new virus. After some back and forth with Lynn, I decided to still travel to NC for the weekend just to have some fun. 

Email from race director announcing  cancellation of race.

After settling on still going to NC, the race director sent a follow up message saying that they were encouraging runners to run a virtual half or marathon and to upload their results. We could still get our medals and shirts (in a manner to be determined still as of this writing), so for me, this sounded as close to an official race as possible given the crazy circumstance. 

Virtual race option email from race director.

Frida Kahlo mural in Durham.

Flower, butterfly mural in Durham.

Off I went on Friday. It was great to see Lynn. She and her youngest daughter, Rette, showed me all around Durham that day. We had a blast walking through their neighborhood (Brightleaf Square) out to the downtown area and to the site where they were going to be moving in the next couple of years as their townhome development takes shape (under construction). We ate lunch at a yummy Middle Eastern place and saw the famous bull statue in the main square. We stopped into a hotel that also had an art gallery in it called 21C, which was very cool. 

Bull statue in the Bull City center.

Later in the afternoon we walked out to the Duke Gardens on the Duke University campus. The gardens were incredibly gorgeous, and I loved feeling the springlike weather and seeing all the beautiful plants and flowers. It was such a nice escape from all the craziness of the world at the moment. 

Asian garden view.

Wooded, water feature in garden.

Flowering tree.

Flowers and herbs in planter. 

White garden.

Cherry blossoms. 

Fountain with cherry blossoms.

Raised vegetable beds.

Wand tree. 

Stepped tulip garden.

After all that walking, I headed back to the hotel to relax and change before heading to the Solomon’s place for dinner. Lynn made a yummy pizza dinner and we shared some cocktails and good cheer before heading out to the movies. Lynn and I intended to see the old Bowie film Labyrinth, but when we arrived, it was sold out — due to cutting back on the number of people who were allowed to be in the theater due to the virus. We ended up joining Douglas and Rette for the movie Emma instead. The theater was nearly empty, which was fine with us. It was a fun night out. 

After that I headed back to the hotel and ended up staying up much later than I should have reading the news online and checking various stories on Facebook and other outlets. I had to run the next morning, but the nice thing about this virtual run was that for once, I could sleep in and not have to rush to an obscenely early starting time. Yay for me!