10:00am
You might not guess that I thought I would die of heat exhaustion during this race by looking at my finish pic. The heat totally kicked my butt during this race! I thought I was taking it fairly easy during the first several miles, yet at each split I would see that I still needed to back off more. It's so hard to keep the brakes on during those first few downhill miles. The heat really took it's toll on the first couple inclines during miles 8 and 10. Now I was nauseous and way too hot and it wasn't long before I had to make a pop stop. At this point I knew I wasn't going to see any more 7s if I wanted to finish the race. I started walking through the water stops and took advantage of the shade where it was available. The next bit of excitement was a blue otterpop that went down soooo nice and then quickly came back up like a scene from the exorcist, luckily not much of it came out my nose and it didn't hit anybody. Note to self, never ever try anything new during a race, yeah I already knew that. I finally caught up to Preston somewhere after the half and felt the need to turn around and pass him running backwards, not because I was feeling good or anything, just because we had joked about it earlier. In hindsight I feel pretty lucky that I didn't fall and hurt myself as I was definitely not 100% at the time :) During the climb up the Newton hills Derunzo let out the loudest and most enthusiastic cheer I heard all day. That charged me up for a little while, but not long after that Dan and JG both passed me like I was standing still; actually I may have been. I was so hot and dizzy I could barely string a few words together to say hello and wish them luck as they left me behind. Part of me wanted to man-up and try to turn out a decent time and the other more sensible part of me wanted to finish without the need for a stretcher or an IV. I continued to run at a comfortable pace (simlar to a zombie shuffle) and went a few more miles before I got another slap on the shoulder by someone I knew from some local races at home. He said "COME ON! we're almost there", and I immediately picked up the pace to catch him or I tried to anyway, because within about 3 steps my calves cramped up so bad I almost fell down. When I backed off they calmed down a little bit and I was able to continue at a very slow pace until I hit Boylston Street and tried to pull myself together for the final stretch.
Aside from a little agony on raceday I had an excellent weekend with my friend Preston. Sorry I didn't meet up wth any FRBers after the race. Preston and I decided to do all the race related stuff on Monday, post race massage, open house at Fenway, and the after party at House of Blues. Then a tour of the Sam Adams brewery on Tuesday before heading to the airport. I did get to meet Jake and Andrea on the plane from Chicago. They were both very nice and it was so cool to see somebody I know kick some butt in Boston! Congrats to both of you if you're reading this :)
| 