Race Recap

Ah, yes, my 10-miler. A race wrought with friends, sweat, heat, and probably more alcohol than I have ever seen in one place before (note to the race directors: the free champagne and beer was nice and all, but for those of us under 21 who really just want some free bananas and gatorade, I was a little disappointed...). I knew the race wasn't gonna be pretty when I walked outside at 5:30 that morning, in just my sports bra and shorts, and wasn't cold. At all. Because it was already 70 degrees outside...

  On the way to the race, my running buddies and I sat in the car chatting about college roommates, how much we don't want to race, how effing hot it is, etc. and I chug-a-lugged my way through a water bottle of Perpetuem. Smart fueling choice? Yes.  Good thing for the bladder? Decidedly not.

   See, apparently all 4000 other racers also decided that they needed to pee right as me and my buddy Michele were walking up to the porta-potty line. At 6:45. Time we actually got to the bathrooms? 7:15. Race start? 7:30.

   Then ensued quite a bit of scampering as we met up with the rest of our crew, settled into our waves, and found our pace groups. Coach SuperW gave me a whole race plan, but it centered around a pace a little below 8:00, so I stuck with the 1:20 pace group. The leader was hilarious and had an endless supply of factoids about the city and its history, which, in conjunction with my iPod, did a good job of distracting me from the massive amount of hills in the race. At first.
  Then, right as I was set to go up a massive hill at 7:45 pace (normally an easy clip for me, but in 90 degree weather with no shade? Not so much...), I got that lovely reminder of "battery low" on my shuffle. NOOOOOOOO. I had to turn the thing off until mile 8. I knew I might need some wildly inappropriate rap music to power me through the last inclines, and I was willing to sacrifice mid-race jam sessions in order to conserve power for the big hills later on.
    The race was kind of a blur from then until mile 5, where we suddenly got a reprieve from the inclines and were granted a 1.25 flat section around a lake. I saw a bunch of girls from school at the water station, which was awesome, but right afterwards, when I went to pick up the pace per Coach's plan, I felt like someone had filled me legs with sand. No matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't get below an 8:00 pace. I tried to relax and remind myself that I had sweated off at least 3 pounds at this point, so fatigue was inevitable, and was running in direct sunlight with no shade for the next 3 miles, guarenteeing both a wicked sports bra tan and a few mentally shouted expletives because HOLY CRAP WAS IT HOT, and this seemed to help. Going back through the course after the turnaround, I finally got some juice back... sorta.
   Thankfully, Coach had given me recovery miles. Never in my life have I been so happy to see a mile 7 sign- it meant I got an entire MILE's worth of time to recooperate before picking it up for the biggest hills, which, in keeping with almost every race I do, come at the end. Why, race directors, why!?
   Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt like they were breathing in soup from nostrils attached to a face made of fire- a lot of other people looked like they were DYING by mile 9. Like, some people started powerwalking up the last incline. And someone collapsed 250 yards from the finish right after I came in. It was that bad, folks.
    Official finish time was 1:22:22; not the 1:20 I really want, but hey, I wasn't racing, it was freakin' hot, and I didn't taper AT ALL (remember the 11 miler I ran on Thursday?!). Plus, I got a free piece of watermelon and a sweet t-shirt out of it (with no sales tax!!), so all in all, I consider it quite the awesome morning. Only down side? TCBY doesn't open until 11 o'clock, so I had to settle for a post-race Chipotle burrito instead of a pound of froyo. The hard life.