Race day.. the only day ever in my life on which I will eat oatmeal. I ate it in the usual way: by taking as many bites as possible until I gagged, then dumping the rest down the sink.
Picked up Stoner and Mia and got over to the course at like 8. We ran a little and did agilities, then went and camped out in a nearby hotel with like 70,000 other runners. Then we went and put our clothes in Hunter's car and got to the starting line.
Stoner wanted to start out faster than last year, cause we were mostly catching people for the first few miles last year. So we did, which isn't my favorite thing.. I like starting out a little slower, then catching people as I go.. but it wasn't a big deal. We stuck together for the first 5 miles or so.. at the 3 mile mark, I fell behind a bit, but I caught back up before the 4 mile mark. This first half of the race I feel pretty good about, because I wasn't feeling awesome, but I stuck right in there and even when I fell off a little, I stayed the same distance behind. I ran with this one dude who never actually talked to me, and then another dude who did talk to me and told me about his son named Tony who ran against Dave Sheeran and I told him about my mom and Coach.
Then I got to mile 7, and disaster struck. My feet fell asleep. I could feel it starting to happen and I was like "no no no no no no no. Not here. Please." But they didn't listen. I grabbed some gatorade at an aid station over there, but totally missed my mouth and splashed it all over my eye.. my eyelashes stuck together the rest of the run. I was still doing okay up until like the first hill.. that was where I saw Aubrey and my parents. But the hills are when my legs start to get tight and it didn't feel too good. The first hill was hard, but not awful. The second hill was terrible. I felt like I was crawling up the thing. It was at this point when my feet were completely asleep and my legs were pretty achy, and I said to myself "ya know.. how about instead of racing, I try to make it to the finish line still on my feet." But after the hill I started going faster again. It felt like there was a million years in between the 11th and 12th mile markers, but I got past both of them and found the guys, who were cooling down. Michael came and ran in front of me to block the wind.. I was kind of annoyed, but it got me moving quicker. Then Coach came and ran with me and told me to kick.. so I kind of did and caught like 3 ladies or something.
As soon as I crossed the finish line, I sat down and ripped off my shoes. Why do my feet get numb? It's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Anyway, I thought I came in at 1:44, but the clock was way off and my time was actually 1:37, which is faster than last year. Happy about that, and I was way happy for how great everyone from our team did. Last year I was way mad after the race.. but this year I honestly was just happy (after finishing anyway.. the whole during the race part wasn't so great). It was a lovely day and I was just glad to be alive, which is always a good thing. I'm glad I ran it. | 