This was supposed to be my "A" race where I was going to try for a 1:35 or better. But I quickly found out that I wasn't getting my speed back post-baby any time soon. Then I got injured and actually thought of pulling out of the race. Finally I decided I would just do it for fun.
Because of increased security, the pre-race instructions asked all participants to be in the corrals by 7:00am for the 7:30 start. We left the house at 6:00. It usually takes 15-20 minutes to get downtown. We knew exactly where we wanted to park and there were a couple different exits we could take to get to the parking garage. We were a little nervous about some road closures so we took the most obvious exit, as did every one else. For 45 minutes we sat in traffic at that exit, past 7:00am. I knew they weren't going to shut out all those people, but I was nervous and antsy. Once off the exit, Dave took a side road and I urged him to let me out so I could walk to the start.
And then I got so lucky. I was walking to the start, found an open Subway, which had a clean bathroom with no line. Score!
I got into a corral as close as I possibly could. The starting gun went off and no one moved. At all. But there seemed to be commotion on the side of the corral. I found my way over there and I see that I'm in the wrong corral. I was in corral B and I was supposed to be in A. So they let me in and I was one of the very last people to start in corral A. I never saw Dave or Anderson before I started the race.
It was cold race morning and I went back and forth about what to wear. I eventually went with shorts, a t-shirt, light long sleeve shirt, and gloves. I have the gloves off by mile one. I had the long sleeves off by mile 3. I saw a lot of overdressed people. Or I just overheat quickly while running.
I got a new watch a few weeks ago (I swear I'll blog about this sometime) so I wanted to test out it's GPS abilities against a measured course. For the first 5 miles it was dead on. After that it got a little off. In the end I was at 13.2ish miles. Not bad.
Anyway, against the GPS I wasn't really gaining any speed and wasn't really losing any either. Really consistent but not really as quickly as I wanted to go. I was having fun, though, and that's all that mattered.
Around mile 9 I saw Dave among the throngs of people and was able to toss my shirt to him. It's hard to tend to the baby, grab my shirt, and take pictures. Thanks for the effort, Dave.
Despite not going all that fast, I felt like my form was good and the effort seemed easy. The miles never seemed to drag on. I've done a lot of running since Anderson was born and it shows. Before I knew it I was back on High Street, mile 11, and heading to the finish line.
My overall time was 1:47:08. Eh, it is what it is. I had hoped to run faster but I'm just not there yet. It makes me a little sad that a year ago I was 11 MINUTES!!! faster, but I have done zero speed training this year and have spent most of the last couple of weeks on the elliptical machine. I'll get my speed back. Patience.
1 comment:
you are still speedy!! i hate races that start like that, all hectic and whatnot. great job still getting out there.
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