Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon

I didn't quite have the audience that I normally do for this race.  When I had signed up to do the event in February, I had family living in the city of Duluth.  With my family moving in the spring, I lost the opportunity to have family around for the day.  My wife, Angela, was also not up for the weekend, so I stayed with friends and did the event under nice conditions.  I had hoped going into the race that I might meet a lofty goal of breaking 1:30.  Lofty as I have not been able to get in the long distance training that I have in past years.  I set out with a goal of trying to stay ahead of the 1:30 pacer.  Previous half marathons I have been able to easily do this, but this year would be different.  I ran through the 5K mark at a respectable time of 20:00 even and cleared the 10K mark at 41:37.  I then crossed the 10 mile line at 1:08:44 and at that time the 1:30 pace group which I had been ahead of up until now finally reached me.  The pacer for the group told me as his group caught me to "jump on and I'll bring you to the finish."  I jumped on for a while, but the pace proved too quick as I tired and I held the pace for only about a half mile or so before realizing I needed more miles in the belt before keeping up with that group.  As I crossed by Pizza Luce, I raised my hands to the sky and tried to rouse the crowd who were surprisingly quiet.  I would have expected fans to be cheering all runners on but it was quiet at this place in the race, but some hand movements to rouse the crowd got the fans cheering loudly and gave myself and my fellow runners around me a needed boost to push us all to the finish.  I crossed the 11.9 mile point at 1:22:09, meaning a 1:30 finish could still, technically be possible.  I only needed to do a 7:13.6/mile pace to achieve 1:30, but not today.  Today I would settle for a nice final kick to come in at 1:30:51, just seconds ahead of 1:31.  Upon finishing the race, I went on to belly up to the feast that Grandma's Marathon provides to it's finishers.  In my opinion, there is no other race that does better.  Today's stats were that I finished 182/2724 males an 208/6478 overall.  I was 22/333 in the male 35-39 age group.  I still haven't gotten used to hearing that I an now in that age group.  Most importantly, on this long run I maintained a 6:57/mile pace over the course of the race and felt good on finishing.
MTec Results posted a finisher's video that can be viewed at the following website.
http://www.mtecresults.com/runner/videoResults?rid=13900&race=735
In the video I am the fourth runner to cross the line.  I am wearing green shorts and no shirt.