Today was race day! Yipee!
I left my house at about 5:45AM, well it was exactly 5:45AM as I hit the button to lower the garage door. Made it downtown fast enough, just a bit of traffic getting in to my chosen garage. I parked basically right outside of my coral. I hit the porta pottie, then watched the start of the 5k race, then back to the porta pottie (last minute jitters!), a little stretching, then in to my coral. I was much further forward this year, in coral E, so I was to the start line in under 3 minutes after the gun.
The race was going well enough into the Speedway. I was going faster than I thought I should, but who doesn’t on race day. When I passed the Yard of Bricks, I was on pace to run a 1:49 half marathon! Then I started falling apart. Just inside the track I had gotten a super sweet glass of Gatorade and my system wasn’t happy with it. Just kinda threw me off a bit as I was running around the track. I walked through one of the water stops, and in hindsight that was a terrible idea because it put the idea of “walking is ok” in to my head. I would walk several more times by the end of the race. I ended up with pain in my right hip / uppper quad area around mile 9, and I remembered my last half in November and how I came up injured, so my mind was easily convinced to just take it easy for those last 4 miles.
The yard of bricks was between miles 7 and 8 and I was on pace for 1:49 with an 8:21 average mile. By mile 10, I was at a 9:28 average pace! That should pretty clearly demonstrate how quickly I fell apart. Now, I think those times are “gun time” and not “chip time,” since they came from the tracking system that the race provided, but the chip adjusted times will also show the tremendous drop off. I finished in 2:05:28 gun time, and my watch showed 2:02:38 or so. I’ll try to remember to update this posting when the official results are posted, but, I’m not too concerned.
Other than me being me, the day was perfect. Easy to park, excellent volunteers, perfect weather – not cold at the start, not too hot while running, just some slight sprinkles at the end. I had a good time running with 35,000 of my closest friends!
I’m not upset with my result. Yes, I could have gone faster. Could have trained harder. Coulda ran more during my training. Lost more weight. Coulda shoudla woulda. I think I did the best I could today. Other than a nasty blister on the inside base of my left big toe, I finished uninjured. I shall race again another day. I’m thinking the Carmel Half Marathon on June 11!