I went to bed Friday night a little intimidated by the weather prediction which was in the mid to high 20's depending upon where you looked. When i woke up Saturday morning i was relieved to see that it was a toasty 35!
I probably ran about a mile to warm up and all was good. Charles had good advice, "Don't get on the front, those guys are going to go off too fast", so i didn't but i still went off fast. All i thought was "easy, take it easy" and mile 1 came in 6:52, for the next mile i thought "relax, coast, relax" and mile 2 was 6:50.
At this point, Joe Lee blew by me and i continued to try to chill, but the weather, the race, etc. kept me under 7 for mile three. Right about then Charles caught up to me and we started running side by side. Mile 4 must be long, i'm guessing it's long and 5 is short, just looking at my times.
From that point on, Charles and i ran together consistently knocking down miles and slowly bringing back a few runners from the lead group ahead of us.
In the last few miles, it seemed like we'd be way under 1:30 but it was not to be. Maybe the last tenth is long? 52 seconds seems pokey (52x10 = 520/60 = 8 min + mile?) It didn't matter, in the end, i got 9th overall and 4th in my age group, with 1:30.18 way more than i thought i'd do.
The weather was really perfect for the race, i didn't take a drink until mile 10, and i never touched my gu. I was jealous of Charles' drink belt, i know he got more out of his little bottles than i did from a paper cup.
Thanks go out to Jenni who made us scientifically pick this course apart over the last few months and to Charles who was great to run with.
Also thanks to my wife who is awesome! and it's a chocolate chip cookie too for God's sake.
Let's do the numbers:
6:52
6:50
6:57
7:06
6:46
6:57
6:56
6:53
6:47
6:48
6:49
6:55
6:43
:52
1:30:18
Official results are here.
4 comments:
DEA:
That's a hell of a run. You're obviously a lot fitter and faster than you let on. I'm glad I took the under. Just think, if you could have shed less than 2 sec per mile, you would have broken 1:30. Now go back to biking and stop humiliating us slow-pokes.
Seriously, what's next? Any interest in driving down the road to the Mardi Gras 1/2M in February, try to break 1:30 together? Or do you intend to increase the mileage and go full monty in the Spring?
Congrats again.
LPM
Going "full monty" and the concept of running a marathon should not be mentioned in the same sentence. That sounds like a Very Bad Idea.
thx Lance!
the 18 seconds annoyed me, but maybe next time. i think i'm going to be doing a duathlon the same day as the Mardi Gras Half, i'll let you know.
No worries about the full monty Carrie :) I won't be running the full, clothed or naked before July. Just going to chill. I'd flirted with the idea of Houston earlier, but then decided against it. I just heard that race is sold out, 15,000 people! amazing.
We don't call him SUPERDAVE for nothing...
Congrats, that's awesome!
I only thought 13 miles was a long way...but when you look at a list of all those split times, Wow...that's a lot of miles!
I actually counted them to make sure there wasn't more than 13, it just looks like a lot!
Next time count me in for the last tenth, I'm thinking I can break .52 :)
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