Had one of those disastrous races with a glorious blowup complete with cramping, walking, wailing and gnashing of teeth from about mile 9.5 to the end. Kim ran a lot smarter and did very well especially considering she just barely started running again last week after her injury and not running at for about 4 weeks. My finish time actually would have been low 1:30's but I was so perturbed at the idea of running the actual race slower than my training run on the same course 2 weeks ago, I decided around mile 12 to turnaround and head back to find Kim and finish with her and just tack on an extra mile or so to my overall miles for the day. So what I think the main problems were today: 1) Late start & heat (but this was expected so can't make excuses about this one - Hawk blamed the bus company - said he ordered 24 busses but only 14 showed up), 2) Cramping just after mile 9 (why? I haven't cramped forever!), and probably the main reason 3) Ran mile 1 too fast around 6:19 on the garmin but closer to 6:10 according to the mile 1 marker. Plan was to run around 5-10 seconds faster per mile than my training run 2 weeks ago to finish in around 1:27-1:28. This meant miles 1-6 around 6:35, mile 7 6:45, mile 8 6:35 and rest of miles around 6:50. Felt super good at the beginning and decided to ignore the watch and run by feel. I think I really blew it during 1st mile running to too fast. Splits below until I sort of stopped paying attention around mile 11 or 12. 1 - 6:19 (feeling like Superman) 2 - 6:39 (feeling the need to repent for mile 1 being too fast) 3- 6:37 (next few miles feel pretty dang good) 4 - 6:35 5 - 6:33 6 - 6:38 7 - 6:56 (coming up the hill at the fork I'm starting to think I may be headed for trouble) 8 - 6:50 (starting to get indications of crash-and-burn pending along with cramping) 9 - 7:07 (can't hold sub-7, cramping begins and the end is nigh) 10 - 9:36 (full-blown cramping and jog/walk begins) 11 - 9:45 .............. Everything after this point is 9 min pace at best, walking pace at worst. Oh well, you can't win em all. Looks like the field was maybe the fastest ever this year, I don't think I ever remember top 3 in 45-49 AD all being sub-1:20 (actually 3rd place may have been 1:21). Dang. | 