Definetely the most difficult conditions I've ever ran in, save maybe my 2nd leg of Ragnar when I had the asthma attack. Still, close. Shakeout at 11:30. I thought the race was at 4:30, but apparantly it got moved to 2:30, so that messed up my schedule. I ate lunch with Jonathan. I had an apple, a banana, some pineapple, and some rice with what I thought was pineapple salsa, but actually was more of a curry/potato thing. It was gross, but it was the best pre race meal I could find(I honestly think anything else would've been better, but more on that later). Johnny boy and I left almost immediately after lunch to go get signed up so we'd have around an hour to relax and cool off in our dorms(it was 100 degrees out+ humidity) before heading out, but due to confusion we were standing out in the sun getting checked in for over an hour, losing precious fluids. Returned to the dorms and had maybe 5 minutes to go to the bathroom/change. Jogged to the start and chilled with J-man, Parker, and a few others. Got to the start, and had to wait there for around 10 minutes because of even more confusion. There were about 400 people running the race. These sorority girls came up to Daniel, Parker and I, and told us we'd have to get top three for some reason. We agreed. Bull horn goes off, and the three of us are off. The course markings were terrible! As soon as I took the lead, I started to make a gap and I heard Parker yelling at me that I missed an unmarked turn, so an extra 10 seconds or so were added on catching back up to them. Around here Daniel got dropped, so it was just Parker and I side by side. First mile in 4:24. Ha! The markers were so off. Just add about a minute per mile for the first two markers. We hit the uphill at about 1.3, and the curry hit me. Oh man, did it hit me. I felt so sick. My stomach was on fire and I wanted to hurl but couldn't. Two miles in 9:27. At this point Parker's long gone and I'm just trying to hang on for dear life. I turn my head and see an older guy maybe 8 seconds behind me. I started thinking "even if he passes me, I get first for my age group". I was wussing out so hard, all I could think of was how sick I felt. But, I wasn't going to just hand him my 2nd place plaque. I picked up the pace quite a bit on the downhill(not to too respectable of a pace), and just hoped I'd drop the old guy. I looked behing a little while later, and he's maybe 4 seconds behind. I still didn't slow down though. 3 miles in 16:38. Not sure about how off this split was, but I do know that it took me another 2 minutes to finish the 5k. I looked back after I finished, and I had dropped the old guy by about a minute. Overall poorly coordinated and marked race. Poor racing conditions. Poor attitude. Not sure if the course was an actual 5k. I hope not. Cooled down maybe a mile with Jonathan, who got 6th. He ran 20:12, which isn't too far off his 19 min. 5k PR, which is crazy when his 800 PR is 1:59!
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