This race was fun and memorable. First off I had to work all night
. Our staff had to power off every system, router, and device in our
Computer Center so rewiring could be done in our Computer Center. I did
get two hours of sleep from 2am to 4am during the rewiring, power
phase, then we powered everything up and got done at 7:10 (to power
everything up and make sure everything is working takes quite a bit of
time!). I raced home got my bib number and headed up to the start of
the race which was at 8am. This left me no time for a warm-up.
The first mile I felt tired and sluggish, and my legs felt like bricks
(1 mile 6:36p). The first 2 miles are very hard uphill miles so being
tired and running this course definitely wasn't to my advantage. The
next mile, "still feeling like I was dead on my feet", I was in second
place at (6:42p). Now mile three is one that I've ran a lot in my
training, and I enjoy running because of the rolling hills. I past
the guy that was in first place here (5:47p). I knew I would
eventually caught him because he shot out like a cannon the first 2
miles and ran too fast, but I still wasn't that confident that I would,
because I didn't feel in a groove at all. Now the 4th mile is downhill
for almost half a mile, and the rest of the half is flat (5:20p). I
was feeling better on this mile, but still not in a groove. In fact my
wife drove by me and told me I was a minute ahead of the guy in second
(so I thought I was in first place, more about that later). The last
two miles are a gradual uphill and I did those in 5:53, and 6:14. I didn't really push the last two miles as hard as I could have I just floated along thinking that a vault zero soda with caffeine sounded good. I probably should have tried to push hard, but I was worried about injury with being tired and not having a warm-up. Also according to my Garmin the race was 6 miles rather than 6.2 so it was 200m short according to my garmin.
Now I thought I
finished first at 36:35, but there was another runner that finished in
32:59. The funny thing is I never saw this runner through the whole
race ahead of me. But runners behind me told me that he turned up the
wrong road. He turned up the shorter road before the big hills, Alvin
Ricken Rd. rather than American Rd. so he basically ran a shorter
route. This road that he turned down will come out at the same place
as the other road and allow you to get back on the race course again,
but like I said it's a shorter road and the wrong race route. I bet it
cuts off at least half a mile or longer on the course. I didn't
complain to the race director, but other runners did. I would have if
it wasn't just a fun run and no real price for the winner. But this
explains why I never saw the runner. Later that day I ran another 9.8 miles.
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