Southern California's Half Marathon

Hello Friends,
So as many of you know, on Saturday January 7, 2012 I ran my first half marathon. So I ran with my pops, now here's the story.
So driving for four hours to arrive in Riverside, California (see previous post) we all went to bed and set our alarms for 4am. We left for Irvine at 5am Irvine and stopped at Jack in the Box to get  hearty protein filled meal but when my father asked for a cheese free burrito the refused, apparently cheese doesn't come off of the breakfast burritos that early in the morning in Riverside, so we picked the burritos up later in the trip.
After arriving in Irvine we got a good parking spot, picked up our t-shirts, and I took a warm-up dump in the port-a-potty. We wandered for about a half an hour then I stretched out my legs with Paul's tree-calf-stretching technique (patent pending). We snapped some photos then lined up.
Now lining up for the race was tricky, behind the start line there where signs telling you where to line up, according to your pace. The fastest runners up front, slowest in the back, so me and my dad decided that we would be in the 10:00-11:00 minute mile pack then waited for the gun to fire. *BANG* and off we went...barely moving as the crowd around us inched to the start line, the crowd opened up right before we passed under the banner so we started moving.
I had my gps watch set to show the timer, distance and the pace of the previous mile, plus they had markers at every mile, some were easy to find while others were on the ground halfway ripped. At about mile 2 there was a live rock band who helped us groove and mile 9 there was some kid with his acoustic guitar (his band name is aurora, he told me to look him up...I haven't yet). The track the ran was full of loops and turns. For the first mile we ran mostly down one road the turned into a large wash with a trail on it, the trail was not that large so it got pretty crowded at times, considering 4000 people finished the race. We continued in the wash for another 6+ miles the popped out going up a block only to turn around and go back from where we started. This up a block down a block pattern lasted the rest of the race, occasionally putting us back in the wash. I was running a great race, no pain, tons of energy, then mile 10 came, I remember mile 10 because we were back at the same corner where the old band was playing, and they were still rocking out, I was getting tired, it was already the farthest I had ever run and my body was still keeping up a 10:30 mile pace, but I slowly began to slow down, and my dad didn't.
 For the next 3 miles I fought to keep him in my sights, but lost him with about a mile left to go. The last mile is back in the wash until you can see the finish line, as soon as you come out of the wash there was a runner there with his medal on saying "once you turn the corner you have to run as fast as you an till the finish line!" so I did, and as fast as I could was pretty slow, until I noticed the crowd and the cheerleaders cheering me on, according to my watch I was running at just over a 5 minute mile pace down the finishing stretch till I crossed the finish line. That picture of me looking tired is just after crossing, (we couldn't get one of me crossing the finish line because of some jerk security guard but that's another story). I felt just like I looked,
About a minute after finishing the adrenaline wore off and my legs and feet started stinging, and due to an injury earlier that week, it was tough to walk on my left foot in fact I just stopped limping yesterday. It was a great race and plan to keep training for another half, and hopefully a full before the year ends.