We spent Sunday night with Preston's great aunt, who I will call AD, because she lives closer to the race site than we do. We also gave her Pyhrra, our 4th cat, who could never be happy in a multi-cat household. We did the right thing. In the 18 hours we were there that cat totally transformed. I think she and AD are going to be very happy together.
Anyways, we woke up at 5, I ate a Snickers Marathon Bar (Multi-Grain Crunch for the least fiber) and a banana and drank some of my Bolthouse Farms Mocha Cappuccino (wonderful stuff - has completely broken me from Starbucks), waited for my stomach to do its thing, and headed out.
Unfortunately, by the time we were there, my stomach was ready to do its thing again. Does visiting the honey bucket before a race make me a real runner??
Moving on: watched a lovely sunrise and we were off. I seeded myself well on this race - not much passing and not much being passed in the beginning. The course was sort of an out and back for mile 1 and then an out and back in another direction for the rest, so I got to see the leader run by about 5 minutes into my run, and again after about 12 minutes. I think he ran a 15:50ish, and beat his nearest competitor by 2ish minutes. Way to go red sweatband dude!
The first mile felt good. My goal was just to settle in and go out quickly but not too fast. I hit it with a 10:10 split. Then we were off into the second mile, and looking back on it, this is where I may have been able to do better mentally. I can't really explain it, but the out just felt so interminably looooooong. The leader passed me just after I turned onto this out, and I kept thinking that the turnaround must be soon, but it wasn't. This leg just seemed to go on forever. The extreme humidity made me feel like I was breathing liquid air. And it was hot - probably 80ish. I started to question my ability to go sub-31. Finally I passed the second mile marker, and what do you know? A 10 minute split exactly. Proof that it is all in my mind. Then I picked it up for the last mile, knowing that I needed to go sub-10 for this last mile or throw a PR away. I started picking off people in front of me, many who seemed to be fading. I charged up the only hill on the course, totally unwilling to slow down, then had a small panic attack at the top afraid that I was blowing my wad too soon. I had to be firm with myself - I knew I was almost there. Finally I passed a Fort Bend Fit coach (Fort Bend Fitters were out in droves at this race) who yelled to the man behind me that he only had one lap of the track left. I stepped on it, briefly wondered if I had anything left, pushed through that, ran through the firehouse, and crossed the line.
30:20. For 9:47 minute miles. I went sub 9:30 on that last mile to pull that one out.
Afterwards I sat on a curb with Preston and we actually watched sweat oozing out of my legs. When I stood up there was a butterfly-shaped ass-print in sweat on the curb. Good times.
Of course, as I reacted to the 31:18 at the Dad's Day 5K, I'm already trying to figure out where I can get 20 seconds to go sub-30... another shot in 2 weeks, we'll see how it goes.
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