Go, you chicken fat, go away!

Finally I went running!  Oh Easter.  If only I could celebrate it the right way.  Instead I gorge on chocolate and Easter ham.  Et cetera.  Et cetera.  Anyway, I felt a little tight this morning.  Especially in the shins.  I wanted to average 8 min./miles.  Nailed it!  (Sung in a high pitched voice.)

Time - 23:58 (avg. pace 7:59)

Splits -

1 mile - 7:50

2 mile - 8:09

3 mile - 7:59

Something strange happened today.  The Palo Verde trees were bent and twisted in different angles than usual.  The sidewalk seemed to meander in a different pattern.  Bushes had sprung up from whence they were not before.  Ah dang!  I missed my turn.

Time - 27:04 (avg. pace 7:56)

Splits

1 mile - 7:57

2 mile - 8:02

3 mile - 7:53

0.41 mile - 3:13 (7:48 avg.)

Sorry I haven't run, Eric.  I've got a pain in my leg and after reading everyone's blogs about getting injured, I'm paranoid.  But here's a picture from Easter.  My wife got all the girls dresses while she was in Mexico.

I got beat by 671 people and still came in the top 5%!! 

Today was Pat’s Run.  This is a 4.2 mile run in honor of fallen soldier Pat Tillman.  If you don’t know, Pat cut his career short as a member of the NFL football team, the Arizona Cardinals, to fight in the war against terror.  He was killed in the line of duty by friendly fire.  Pat wore #42 when he played football at ASU and #40 as a member of the Arizona Cardinals.  The race was held at ASU, and 42 was a common theme for many aspects of the race.  That’s why the race is 4.2 miles long.  The kids’ race is 0.42 miles.  Both races finish up on the 42 yard line of the ASU football field.  They even have a special age category of 40-42.

I knew I needed to get up early to make it to the race on time.  Four of my girls ran the 0.42 mile race, so I made sure they had everything out the night before.  I was still worried that our wake up time of 5am wouldn’t be early enough.  But any earlier would just be ludicrous.  So I got up, got dressed, had 3 fig newtons and some Cytomax for breakfast, got the girls ready (I’m sure my wife did most of that), and got out the door by 6am.  It’s a good 35 to 40 minute drive to the stadium.  I figured I could take the 60 to the 101 to the 202 and get off at Rural.  Good idea, but about a half mile before the exit, traffic was at a halt.  If you’ve done the math, you know that there were a lot of people in this race.  I thought about jumping out of the car as soon as I got on the off-ramp and running the rest of the way to the race.  Might be a good warm up.  But traffic picked up some when we got there.  Still it was slow, so with about a half mile to go, I jumped out on Rural Road and ran to the start with 10 minutes to spare. 

I lined up in the 7 to 8 minute mile pace corral.  They started us out in waves.  My goal time was 30:30.  Secretly my goal was to beat my boss and his wife, Jared and Michelle.  They have been a big inspiration for me to start running again.  (I beat them, but I’m not bragging.)  Read my 2009 Del Sol Ragnar report for more on them.

1 mile – 7:10 – I spent the most part of this mile doing the bob and weave.  I was actually surprised that this was my fastest mile, but there were times when I looked at my Garmin and saw I was running sub 7.

2 mile – 7:18 – This must’ve been the hill James W told me about.  I pushed it because he said it would be the same amount of downhill.

3 mile – 7:16 – I can’t think of anything interesting about this mile.

4 mile – 7:25 – Another boring mile, but almost done.

0.2 miles – 1:28 (7:20 pace) – I didn’t have much of a kick.  Next year I‘ll know that as soon as I get inside, it’s a mere 42 yards to the finish.

So, 672nd out of 13,360.  I’ll take that.  The old man from Kingman that I want to beat so bad next month in the 10k beat me again.  He better watch out. His days are numbered.   After the race we grabbed some free ice cream popsicles from Blue Bell.  I snagged one and kept walking.  After a while I wondered what was taking my girls so long to get theirs.  I went back just in time to see my wife dumping PowerAde onto my 6 year old’s mouth to unfreeze the popsicle that had frozen to her lips.

Next my girls ran.  I only signed up the three oldest, but my four year old wanted to do it, too.  So my wife went with her and they ran it bandit. There were so many kids that I didn’t see them finish, but my wife said that our 4 year old left her in the dust.  She was just praying that no one would take her and that she would be able to find her at the finish line.  All is well.  Pretty fun day!