How can someone with glasses so thick be so stupid?
My brain feels exhausted right now. So don’t expect much from me today. Apparently a weekend of traveling does not make me feel refreshed and ready to take on the week.
But…here’s a quick review of the race. I’ll give a quick recap of the weekend later.
Saturday morning Iw oke up around 5:30 and we left the house around 6 to get downtown in time for our 7AM start. Ugh…7AM races SUCK big time.
It was humid and damp before leaving the house, but it didn’t feel too cold so I stuck with a t-shirt and capris. I was so tired my fingers weren’t working. I dropped my bagel half with peanut butter on it about 3 times before finally eating it. I couldn’t get my number to pin on my shirt. And my body felt like it was weighing an extra 40 lbs dragging me down. It was not a good start to the day.
We get downtown and roads that were supposed to be open were closed. All the parking decks were on closed roads and we couldn’t figure out how to get to any of them. It was really frustrating that we specifically checked the road closures and these weren’t listed. We finally just parked in a random monthly parking lot and hoped our car wouldn’t have a boot on it after the race.
We got out of the car and I swear it was 20 degrees colder than at home. I contemplated wearing a throw away shirt…but ultimately decided I would be ok in my T-shirt until the race started. We walked up a hill to the starting line and I knew I was in trouble. I felt like I was dragging my body up the hill and the race hadn’t even started. We went to the port-a-pots and my nemesis defeated me again.
I cannot for the life of me take a pre-race poop. It just doesn’t happen. It’s too early in the morning for me. I’m not awake enough. And my body is on an 8:00 pooping schedule…not a 6:00. I just hoped the race would be short enough that it wouldn’t really bother me until I finished.
We lined up in the starting corral and I just stayed near the back of my group. I didn’t really want to get in the way of people gung ho about this race because I just was NOT feeling it. All I could think was that in approximately an hour it would be over and I’d be done. That was ALL I could think about.
I put on my mp3 player to try and get me a little pumped up, but it wasn’t working. I was chilled, it was starting to mist, and I just was not in the mood to run. I psyched myself out before the race even started.
The gun went off and I crossed the starting line about 2 minutes later. I started my watch and started shuffling down the road. There were a lot of people for the first mile and it didn’t start thinning out to a comfortable amount until almost mile 2.
I didn’t really try to pass anyone in the beginning. I just sped up or slowed down according to the people in front of me. I figured this at least kept me from starting out to fast like I always do. We hit mile 1 in about 14 minutes (umm…a little TOO slow even for me).
At this point I started to speed up a bit (but seriously, I was just DRAGGING). My knee was already bothering me. The road wasn’t really flat. It was going at a very slight incline (not enought to be noticeable except to my knee) and the road was pitched on both sides so unless you ran directly in the middle, you were running at a slight slant. Again, neither of these would normally bother me, but they were killing my knee.
We finally hit mile 2 and I stopped at the water station. I tried to stretch out my legs and just walk a few seconds hoping it would help wake me up a bit. I didn’t check my watch at the 2nd mile marker but I think I ran the mile in about 11 minutes.
We turned off the main road and started our way back. This road sucked. It’s brick and when it rains (like it kind of was that morning) it gets really slippery and it hurts my knees on a normal day so it was really bothering me that morning. I finally stopped and walked the last two blocks of brick road just because I couldn’t run on it anymore. I almost wiped out 2 times on it and it just seemed like it was hurting me more time wise to run than to just stop and walk.
I somehow missed the mile 3 marker so I have no idea how I did, but I’m guessing not very good. I felt slow and oafish running that mile.
Somewhere between the mile 3 and 4 marker I had to start playing mind games with myself because I was so sick of running. I just wanted to be finished. I wasn’t physically tired like I couldn’t run anymore or anything. In fact my legs and lungs felt great like I could run another 5 miles, but my mind was just done. I kept saying, run to the next traffic light then you can stop.
Luckily, there were hot cops at just about every light and I refused to stop in front of them…so…I kept running.
Unfortunately, around mile 4, my nemesis struck again. I had to go to the bathroom SO BAD and there was NOWHERE to stop. None of the stores were open, it was mostly houses on the road, and there were no port-a-pots. I just kept trying to ignore it and keep running.
The last half mile or so of the race is always the best. You make a bunch of quick turns to put you on the road with the finish line and you can hear the people and you start to see more spectators cheering you on and you just know you’re almost done. It felt great.
Once you’re on the last road, there is a straight down hill section (which I would hate if I had just run the marathon b/c its too steep for that late in a race, but whatever). I let the hill just pull me down (I felt so fast I felt like a Kenyan at this point!) without trying to slow down or anything.
Unfortunately the hill ends about .2 miles from the finish line and I didn’t want to slow down so I was trying to hold the pace all while needing to poop and wanting to throw up from holding it in and running too fast.
It was great.
I finished in 1:06:05 which was 6:05 slower than I wanted to be…but still better than I thought it would be.
So, all in all. Not a good race. I was really disappointed how slow I was and my knee felt like shit for the majority of the race. But, I finished and I guess that’s all the really matters.
I also knocked off 4 minutes from last year so at least it was a PR.
