Race day came too early for me. I am still trying to recover from my stressful week of school, and have been extremely stressed and tight all week. However, it is good to be done with this 30k. I wasn’t looking forward to this race and wasn’t sure how I would do, but it turned out okay.
We warmed up for a few minutes before the race. I was surprised at how many people didn’t show up today. Either people chickened out or they did their selves in at one the Salt Lake races last week. At the same time a lot of the decent runners were still there.
I started out with Bob Hinze and a fair sized group. We were going at about 6:20 pace, and it felt easy, even though I knew that it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Dan dropped back after a mile or two, and Dustin was back and forth with the group for the first 7 miles. After a few miles our group was me, Nate Pollard, Bob, and Cody, and it pretty much stayed that way through mile 12.
The course wasn’t too hard, but it wasn’t super easy either. It all looked the same to me after a while anyways. I mostly set the pace for our little group, and it was nice to have some guys to run with. I was glad I had attached myself with a few guys or it would have been a long, boring race. I didn’t feel that great today, and for some reason was having stomach cramps from mile 4 – 17. I kept trying to relax to easy the cramping, and I think that running with those guys helped in that way too. We visited quite a bit and just worked together. We caught Bill Cobler at about 10 miles and that was al that I really passed the whole race.
Nate took off about mile 12 and I had no desire to follow, at first. Bob and Cody stuck with me, but more on my shoulder than running side-by-side. After a while I got tired of it, and decided to follow Nate, who was closing on Ted. I started to leave Bob and Cody about 15.5 miles and chase Nate and Ted. I felt okay and made put a little cushion between me and the guys behind me, I didn’t really feel like a foot race today. I ended up finishing about a block behind Nate and Ted, and over one minute ahead of Cody, Bob, and Bill. I was pretty dehydrated by the time I finished, because I only drank about a half cup of water the whole race. I am usually really good at drinking and sometimes evevn drink too much, but today it made me feel sick so I didn't do it much. I will probably suffer for it later, and was probably dehydrated in the first place, and that is why it made me sick. It was nice to finish when I did, but I knew if I had to go a full marathon today I could have, and probably held my pace. I felt good about that. I didn’t really have any expectations going into this race except that I wanted to feel out a 2:45 marathon pace, and I didn’t want to lose my age group place. I accomplished both and felt good about it.
I went on a cool down with Russ, Ted, Paul, Steve, Sasha, Cody, and Dan. Got really sunburned too! I think that I ended up 2nd in the age for the circuit, far behind Ken Richardson.
Good job to all of the bloggers that ran today, especially my WBR team who took the top three places overall, and five of the top eight. Good job to Paul for winning, and Steve, Sasha, Cody, Dan, and Dustin for a good run too.
(Tangent-114 miles) | 