So very happy to be reporting this race. I have to admit that I did not have a lot of expectations going into it. It has been 18 months since I have raced last, it has been an incredibly difficult year for me, personally, and let's face it, I am not getting any younger. Greg told me that the best case scenario, for him, would be that I would have a great last 5K and wished I had gone out faster. Dean thought I could come within 1:30 of my PR (~1:36 or so) - and I thought, "that would be good and still leave me 6 weeks of training for Houston". Besides, whine whine, I am fighting this cold, I have had this darn niggling pain in my leg ... yada yada. Last night we had dinner with my friend from Tucson, Merry, and her family, and then sat around and joked with some of her running group friends (they are part of the Tucson Grinders -- they are a very fast group here in town, coached by a woman named Michele Hill, who has run in the Olympic Trials a few times). It was a lot of fun. Actually, one of the women in the group is from Utah, Paula Morrison (she is the #49 notable St. George Legend from her 2:44:50 time from 2002). This race was really poorly organized, especially for one that had been known to attract some pretty fast runners. There were a little over 1,000 runners and yet there were 7 -- yes 7 -- porta potties at the start - actually there were more runners than that because there was a 5K too and these 7 pop's were near the 5K start (over 1/4 mile from the 1/2 marathon start). There were some more bathrooms near the finish line, but that was farther away, and I did not know about them until the finish. Anyway, this matters because I was in line to use a pop until about 2 mins before the start -- I had to sprint to starting line, and push my way into the crowd. Consequently, I started back further than I would have liked. In the end, it didn't matter because of chip timing, but this was going to factor into being a problem later on ... because, the timing mats were wrong from about mile 3 until I don't know when. My first mile was 7:33 by my watch - which felt slower than I was running to me, but I thought, well, I am just not in good shape, it is ok ... hang in there and let the race come to you. For the next 2 miles I just felt like I was passing a bunch of people who were running slower than me, and it did not worry me, but it was weird. Then, there was a clock, just out there, with no mile marker, no timing mat, no nothing. It read 21:43 and I had no idea what it was -- weirdest thing was that the 3 mile marker was up another 1/2 mile or so?? And my watch read 24 mins. I wondered how I could be passing so many people and be running so much slower than I should have? At mile 4 my split was 6:05???? yea, right! My next was 7:59 ... and, well, you get the drift, it went like this the whole race. At the 10K I asked the guy next to me if he could see the pace group sign in front of us (they were about 200 meters ahead). He couldn't but he said we just went through the 10K at 42:50 or so (which would be a pr for me) and I said, "shoot, I shouldn't be up here". Well, eventually, I caught the pace group, and it was the 1:35 group. I just sort of hung on them until about 12 and then saw Paula who had run (actually she won) the 5K, she started yelling at me to catch the woman in front of me ... and so I did. I don't know why, but whenever people yell at me to "dig deep" or "catch someone" (when it is someone I know) it really helps me ... so I passed the pacer, I passed the woman who was with him ... and then held on to the finish. I was pretty happy. Too bad I don't have splits to help guide my last 6 weeks of training -- but, I really can't complain. It looks like the 10K and 10 mile splits from the website might be correct (5K: 23:40 (7:38 pace), 10K: 44:55 (7:13 pace), 10 mile: 1:12:15 (7:13 pace)) but I really think the 5K split is off; if I assume the "clock in the middle of nowhere" was mile 3, then it would make sense that my first 5K was in the 7:12 range. I do feel like I was running a little too fast for the first half of the race (up until I joined the 1:35 pace group -- I think I caught them at mile 8-9) -- but I guess since I was able to hang on it wasn't really that fast. I just found it odd that I was passing people most of the race. I passed one of the Grinders at mile 2 who ended up running a 1:40 ... and she ran a strong race ... so it wasn't like she went out too fast and died. By the way -- it was 35F at the start, about 41F at the finish, basically a perfect day to race. My friend Merry, who is 56, ran a 1:32:56!!!! The ride home was a little painful, my hamstring is very sore right now. I need to go check the CIM results and see how many people qualified today for the trials, I had heard there were over 100 people giving it one last shot (well, besides those running Las Vegas)!!! Happy Sunday bloggers!
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