When a spot opened up for this pacing gig, Becky volunteered me to join her. Wasn't overly excited about it but felt better about it by calling it a date night. Going into this, I had two big concerns. First, I was sitting in the blistering sun all day watching soccer games so was very concerned about being dehydrated - especially considering my propensity to wilt in the heat due to my size. My biggest concern, however, was that my calves are still damaged from Ragnar. Not sure if I'm ready to call it an injury yet but they are very painful. Sometimes I think I just create potential issues just so I have things to worry about. Pacing the 1:50 group should be just a comfortable long run but with the flat course and the race time temperature in the 90's, this is about 9 minutes slower than most races so I was not 100% confident I could hit the goal.
Got to the starting line and geared up with all the different types of lights. It was a super small race (120 runners - 20 of which were pacers) so we knew that we would most likely be running alone. We had a few people start out with us to take advantage of my head lamp but were completely alone from miles 3 to 12. Pretty uneventful run. We were within 10 seconds of our goal time the entire race. Realized at mile 5 that the Garmin was going to measure 0.1 short so we tried giving a few seconds back every mile towards the end to account for Garmin/course error. At mile 12, we came upon a girl that was struggling. Told her to stay with us and she was able to pick it up and finish ahead of us. I guess helping one runner at the end makes it worth the effort we put in. Ended up crossing the finish line 30 seconds early but the RD confirmed the course was short so I will consider it a success. It definitely took more effort than a typical race but it was a fun experience because I got to spend an hour and fifty minutes with my favorite runner.
During the run, I had major pains in both calves. They were especially painful on the little up and down sections going into and out of the underpasses. It makes running a little less enjoyable but they will eventually heal. | 