Note: Cross posted from my training log for anyone who may not read my log.
I didn't sleep for crap last night. I kept myself awake trying to decide if I'd go with short or long sleeves today. I decided that if it was cooler than 42 I'd do long, over 42 I'd go short. (Yeah I am that anal and picked something like 42- not40 or 45 but 42
)Well, when I woke up it was 42 degrees on the dot. I decided to go with the short sleeves and that may have come back to haunt me.
I picked my friend Shiela up at her house and dropped my daughter off and got downtown about 7:15. The race was to start at 8:00 soo we had some time to go to a meeting spot to meet up with some more friends. Shiela's friends didn't show, but my super hot sexy algebra teacher did (I guess I'll just call her Laura, now that I'm not in her class). She was fresh off her honeymoon in Cabo. Nice taper.
I waited in the obligatory pre-race porta-john line so long, I thought I was going to miss the start of the race. Luckily, I made it to the starting area about 30 seconds before the gun. It turned out that I hurried for no reason. The times I was hearing were for the wheelchair division. I still had 5 minutes. Less than a minute before the gun, I was doing my last second checks and realized my shoes weren't double-knotted. Oh no! Got that taken care of just in time and we were off.
mile 1 - 7:33 really crowded. Close to 5000 running the big race.
mile 2 - 7:01 fell into a great groove right away
mile 3 - 7:04 nice
mile 4 - 7:00 nicer
mile 5 - 7:15 water stop
mile 6 - 7:00 wow, feeling real good
mile 7 - 7:04 almost halfway already?!
mile 8 - 7:03 this can't be right. Oh no, it's starting to rain.
mile 9 - 7:15 not bad. some hills and I'm starting to get really cold. Had a water stop manned by the National Gaurd. Really cool.
mile 10 - 7:26 something's happening Better total time than my ten mile race a couple weeks ago.
mile 11 - 7:17 let's try to keep this pace
mile 12 - 7:24 this is getting tough
mile 13 - 7:26 barely hanging on. Man, I've still got 2.5 to go.
mile 14 - 7:30 I am so freezing. I think I started too fast.
mile 15 - 7:41 wha...
mile 15.5 - 4:06 was able to sprint the last 50 yards or so and passed a few of the couple hundred or so that passed me in the closing miles.
There you go. I love the time, but I really wish I had paced myself better so I was able to finish stronger. I lost about 2 minutes on the second half. I really wanted a negative split. Oh well. Laura only beat me by 2 minutes. And Shiela was very happy by beating her expectatons. All in all it was a blast and I know I'll be doing it again and again.
Now, I'm going out for drinks with some friends to celebrate. Next week I'm going to take it a little easy, but then start a base building program because I registered for the Grand Rapids Marathon at the expo. I also would like to hit the weights harder for the spring. I'm feeling flabby and weak. I will run a couple 5k's and maybe a 10k this spring, summer but nothing too serious.
Oh! I forgot! After finishing, I found Laura and we made our way to the gear check. By then the rain was coming down pretty hard and I was shivering uncontrollably. I gave them my number but they could find my bag! I was starting to get really pissed when after ten minutes they finnnaly located it! I was so happy to get into a dry sweatshirt and sweats. That was my day.
What'd you do?
5/3 Riverbank Run Race Report
Linear Mode
