Rock 'n' Roll 30 Miler?

I had 30 miles on the schedule for 8/7/2011 but I also was given a free entry through the Brooks ID Program for the Rock n' Roll 1/2 Marathon in Providence.  Straight away I thought no problem, I will just get to the race early and do a LONG warm up, do the race and call it a day.  Well, then I actually looked at the details for the race and saw that the start time was 7am!  So as much as I hated the thought of getting up super early it was still better then adding on a lot of miles after the race.  So the plan was for Jackie to drop me off 4 miles from Providence and I would run to where we would be parked for the day.  I would meet up with her there and we would run just over 10 more miles together before the race, we would then do the race and run back to the car with a little extra added on to make 30 miles for me and 26 for Jackie.  All of this went to plan, Jackie dropped me off, I made it to the parking lot in the time I thought I would and we got all our mileage in before the start...the only thing that did not cooperate was the weather.  Now I definitely can't complain too much because it could have been 95 degrees out, but instead it was just a steady rain all morning.  This was actually good running weather, and I wouldn't have disliked it at all if I didn't wear glasses!
As for the race, I wouldn't recommend running a Rock 'n' Roll event.  I say this mostly because the price is absurd.  This particular RnR event for the inaugral.  It started 15 mins late, but really that was the only issue with the race itself.  The course was marked well, the traffic was controlled, and everthing else was in working order.

Jackie and I ran the race together starting off around 7:20 pace and picking people off as we went along.  We stayed in a relaxed training mind set the whole race and never got faster than about 6:50 pace and finished right around 1:32, it made for a good run on a rainy day that otherwise would have been a pain to get 30 miles in.

Hanging @ Fat Belly's

After the race we met up with some friends and headed to breakfast and then hit up another coffee shop after that waiting for a pub to open!  Once that time arrived we headed over to Fat Belly's Pub, meeting up with some other friends and had our fill of good beer and after breakfast wore off we had some lunch, all of this before 2pm, a pretty productive day!

As you would imagine this was the last LONG run before Transrockies which begins in less than 2 weeks!  Now we just have to stay healthy, maintain the fitness and get to Colorado.