Signing up for races in Jacksonville, Fla., is dangerous to my health.

In late 2009, I registered for a marathon early the next year.  A few days later, while on a training run, I got a lovely stress fracture in my foot.  I spent eight weeks on the couch and ended up switching to run the half-marathon instead on little training.

This year, I planned to do the half-marathon there again, but a few weeks before the race, I started feeling a really bad pain just below my left kneecap when running or walking up/down stairs.  I rested as much as I could, hoping I could at least be back to running by the time the race came around

That didn’t happen.  Instead, I walked the 13.1 miles like this:

It was far more difficult to get through that long of a race while walking, but it was an interesting experience.  Instead of being somewhat near the front with people of my same athletic level, I was way in the back with many who did a lot of walking in between spurts of running to get through the race.  It was much more relaxing being able to take in the scene at a slower pace, but at the same time, it was much more difficult to keep pushing on for that long (3:04:31 this year vs. 1:50:49 in 2010).

Either way, the hardware at the end is the same:

It was nice to get back to my short-time former home, including an early morning trip down to the beach for breakfast and a walk next to the ocean.  Cloudiness spoiled the sunrise, but it was still relaxing to be down there:

The trip started off in rough form.  After working all night, I got on a plane to Charlotte, then connected to my flight to Jacksonville.  Only, my suitcase didn’t make the second flight.  When I got to JAX, I rented a car that despite being located in Florida, made me seem like a super out-of-towner:

So for about five hours, I was in Florida, with a Minnesota rental car while my suitcase was in North Carolina.  At least my hotel had a Starbucks inside.