Cracking 2

It's been a few years since I was in a race that wasn't extremely humid or just insane terrain (I'm looking at you, Bataan Memorial Death March), but today proved to be a good day. Up until the time I woke up this morning it looked like rain could wash out this race, but fortunately the race organizers didn't trust the weathermen. The line of storms passed north, and by the first mile I knew it wasn't as humid as some other races I've been in recently. So I decided to keep a pace in the low 9's and then see where it could take me from the halfway point.

When I hit 6 miles, not quite halfway, I figured I could try and get this one in under two hours. Actually, around mile 4 I had a downhill that I gave in to gravity, but sure, we'll go with a few miles further on for the purposes of this story. I had tried to keep the 2:00 pace group within sight but lost them several times. I probably ran a little too fast through miles 7-10, but that's what saved me in the end.

At mile 11 I passed the ladies carrying the flag for the 2:00 group, talked with them for a few hundred yards, and then continued. At mile 12 I heard footsteps behind me and a guy came up beside me and asked how it was going. I said I think we'll make it, plus we beat the rain. I had a few calf twinges around mile 8 and then more frequently as we went on, but the worst was a new sidewalk right before the mile 13 marker. It wound from the path I usually run up the hill to the middle school track, and every step felt like my calves were painful lead weights. When it finally leveled out the pain subsided and I made the 3/4 of the way around the middle school track to the finish in 1:58:09. That was good for 69th place out of 272.

When I looked at the results 7 of the top 10 were female, and so was the overall winner. That is incredibly cool. I was just outside the top 25%, but at this age and not training to run fast I'll take it. In fact, I wish I'd done more speed work. I finished fourth in my age group by less than a minute from the person in front of me. Oh well, I ran my race and I'm happy. That's what it's all about.