A Giant's Foray

Warning: Incredibly long, will add picture(s) as it/they come.  

Woke up at around 6 to get myself some food and a shower. Got about 5:30 in sleep, pretty much a record before a race. Managed to get a nice bowl of oatmeal and a slice of cheese in. Got a ride from my buddy Brent and his girlfriend in, met a ton of his triathlon buddies from TN Multisports, good people all. 

In planning for this race, I wasn't expecting a whole lot, and put aboslutely no pressure on myself to do anything in particular, as I've not been able to consistently  run since early January. Despite this, I'm in tremendous cardio shape from an enormous amount of cross-training (mostly swimming and rowing), and I've felt great when I've had a chance to run. I was looking to beat my PR from the Seattle Half in November.

Lined myself up maybe 200 people back from the start, as I didn't want to get run over by an early hero moves. There's a downhill to begin, and I didn't want to kill myself; after the downill of a quarter mile, some winding uphills, and I kept myself controlled, which was a motto. Continued to control my speed and heart rate through the second mile, which was pretty flat, and then the downhills began.

 The course is very deceptive, as it is up and downhill pretty much the entire time, but the uphills definitely feel like false flats, and didn't feel like they were taking much out of me. 3 finished in 6:11, and was definitely short, which was confirmed by the 8:01 of the following mile. Tried running tangents, but only one lane of the road was reserved for running, and too many people were around to effectively do this in the first half of the race. Probably 20-30 people passed me in the first 4 miles, and some kids were calling out positions there, apparently I was in 152nd. I took a gel shortly after and felt great. 

At about six miles I was still feeling tremendous, and caught up to a guy named Samesh, who initially looked like he was struggling. I chatted with him for awhile, and we decided we were going to try get top 100.  Took a gel when we hit the water stop at 6.5, where they were handing them out. Why the heck did they have chocolate brownie GUs? Uck. Mile 7 had a minor hill and the time reflects, though at the beginning of mile 8, we decided to try pick it up. Samesh actually put in some really good moves and we caught a couple dozen people.

There was a bit of a hill in 10 that didn't feel too bad, but as soon as we got to the top, we went back down, and I was feeling great cardio-wise, but my calves started really cramping; I clearly wasn't hydrated enough, which was confirmed by my salting limbs after the race. Samesh started to break away, and I resigned myself to controlling myself so as to not blow up.

The next mile and a half were unfortunately uneventful. There was a downhill I tried pressing on, but couldn't get below 7:00, which made me angry. Knowing a major PR was in store, I didn't dare blow myself up. When I saw the highway overpass, I knew there was about a third of a mile, and decided to go for it as hard as I could.  Garmin tells me my average split for the last third was about a 5:40, which included the second biggest hill on the course, so I know I had something left in me.

For a race where I was expecting nothing, and didn't know whether or not I was going to participate just  two weeks ago, I'm thrilled with the result. 1:31:12 is a 3:08 PR, and knowing that that is still pretty soft (bad hydration, a couple rough hills ruining my legs, and just not being able to train) is incredibly motivating.

My original goal, before any of the non-running injuries that have derailed my training occurred, was to break 1:30:00. To have closely evenly split this race and put myself into a position to get that time despite some bad factors makes me excited for what I can accomplish after putting real work in.