Just one race at a time

I had a really hard time getting up for this race after Boston.  I did little training in the three weeks between the race and gained four pounds!  When my alarm went off Saturday morning I almost rolled over turned it off and went back to sleep.  Good thing I had promised my neighbor that I would drive her to the start. 

I got to the race met up with Maynard, Charlie, Mark, and Smooth we set up camp and still no butterflies no adrenalin…nothing.  The plan was to try for a 3:50 and have Mark pace me.  I always go out too fast so his main job was make sure I stayed on pace.  Mark did his job and at mile 13 we were 30 seconds ahead of plan but feeling good.  About here I fell apart mentally, pain started to set in and the fact that I really didn’t want to be there in the first place made it hard not to just quit.  Mark talked me through it and was a great coach.  During the next four miles we lost our lead and ended up 2 minutes behind.  If I kept up the pace I could still PR by 2 minutes, but to be behind was yet again another mental blow.  Mark slowed down at mile 16 and told me to go on, his cold had finally caught up to him.  I latched on to Lowell, a friend of Smooth, and ran with him for a couple of miles until he started to fade.  I than ran into Gavin a runner who was on my Wasatch Back team a few years ago, ran with him until he needed to fix his shoe.   At mile 22 I saw the Zimmerman boy (sorry forgot your name) FLY by he was looking so good I knew he was going to have the race of his life!  Now to make matters worse my ipod died, I was mentally and physically in the crapper, all alone and I had no music.   I walked a lot of mile 23. I decided at mile 24 I was going to pass 10 people there were a lot of people walking so I did this before I hit mile 25.  I had reached my goal so I stared to walk for no other reason than the fact that I didn’t want to run any more.  A man ran up next to me and said “don’t stop you have been pacing me for the last few miles” I ran in the rest of the way but still no excitement even when I crossed the finish line. 

Splits: 8:33, 8:30, 8:24, 8:32, 8:27, 8:41, 8:40, 8:45, 8:42, 8:46, 8:40, 9:28, 8:49, 9:20, 9:12, 9:59, 8:58, 9:09, 9:21, 9:07, 9:34, 9:03, 10:54, 9:19, 10:10, 9:52

I finished with a time of 3:58:58 10^th in my age group.  I have vowed to have a better race at St. George, then again how can it get worse!