Well I flew over to Oahu last night for the race this morning; I barely made my flight. I was acutally in a hurry for a lot in the past 24 hours except for my race which wasn't very fast. I was dirving to the finish line (this is a one-way race, no loop) this morning at around 5:25 AM when I could see my destination, Aloha stadium. From that point it took 1 hour and 10 minutes to get to the parking lot. The race started at 7 and I was just entering the lot at 6:36 with about 10,000 other people. I was really really blessed because at the last second the guard started letting a few cars in a different entry. I got in and parked quickly. I then sprinted to catch probably the last bus to the starting line. At about 6:50AM the bus dropped us off about 1/2 mile or a little more from the starting line. I had to sprint to the start to find 20,000 people squished together. I hopped a few fences and ran from the volunteers to squueze myself into the top 200 or so. I tried squuezing threw until I got 15 yards from the start when a overweight guy wouldn't let me buy because he wanted to get to the start himself.
The story goes on and on but I need to start summing it up. The first mile was 5:40. I trained for sub 5:20 start. It went downhill from there; not the race route but my hopes of finishing at 5:40-5:45 miles. I have been battling a cold for 1-1/2 weeks but kept trying to mentally trick myslef into thinking I didn't have a cold. Well it turns out I do have a cold. The race was terrible. I have never been so weak and my legs were like jello. Oh well. There isn't a lot of competition on Kauai in races so I was really hoping to see what I could do with competition but I guess I'll have to find another race. | 