Mardi Gras Beach Run Race Report

I wasn't sure what to expect from this race, given the crappy weather for the entire week beforehand, and that weather keeping me from running.

We set the alarm for 5:30 with the goal of being out of the house by 6:30. The drive was lovely - didn't even seem to take that long.

The night before I had planned on just wearing one long-sleeved tech. tee and shorts for temps around 50 degrees, but when I woke up I chickened out and went for two tech tees with the shorts, and it turned out to be the right move. I threw on sweats over the whole thing to wear until about 5 minutes before the gun went off.

We arrived about an hour before the 10K was scheduled to start. Made our way over to the Pavilion (may I just say that I looooooooove races with real bathroom facilities available. Love them!) for me to deal with my standard race morning upset stomach, and to get my race packet and chip. Headed back to the car to sit in the warm and I realized that I forgot to get the chip. No matter. Sat until 8:20 and headed back over. The weather the week before had left the area around the pavilion sand-muddy, and I was trying to be really careful to avoid getting my shoes wet. Got a chip and went to the top floor of the pavilion to watch the 5K start. The wind coming off the ocean was brutally cold. The 5Kers started about 10 minutes late, which left me 10 minutes to make my way over to the start line. The announcer started talking to the 10Kers right after the 5Kers took off, which induced quite a bit of a panic from those of us who had stayed in the pavilion to stay out of the wind and the way. People were running across sand-muddy country to get to the start line, only to wait another 5 minutes or so - it was a false alarm.

I ditched my sweats and seeded myself near the back of the pack. Preston snapped a few pics, and we were off!

I must say, I was thrilled with my seeding job. I picked off people steadily for the first mile, but it was a small enough race that I never got boxed in. In mile 2, I saw a beautiful pink bird flying over the tidepools. Looked like a crane, but pink like a flamingo. Preston says that he has seen wild flamingos in Galveston before, so that must have been what it was. I've never seen one fly; it was lovely. I was wearing my Garmin and I glanced down frequently to make sure I was holding a decent pace - just aiming for sub 9:30 the whole time.

I got annoyed at one point because it seemed like every time I went to pass someone, they sped up. I'd still pass them - it was inevitable that their bitch-asses were going down, but gah! Oh, the other small annoyance was that I put my chip on the same shoe as my RoadID. Big Mistake. Every step I took there was a small metallic clink. Just enough to drive me batty! Won't make that mistake again.

The out-and-mostly-back straightaway seemed long, but I used the Garmin to keep my head in the game, checking how far I'd come and how fast I was going. Then it seemed like before I knew it, I was passing mile 5 marker, and I turned on the burners and ran it home.

Here are the splits (via Garmin - the race mile markers were off):
Mile 1: 9:21
Mile 2: 9:28
Mile 3: 9:11
Mile 4: 9:19
Mile 5: 9:12
Mile 6: 8:52 (!!!)
.2: 1:28

56:53.1 for a pace of 9:10/mile. 4th (!!!!!) in my age group of 10 finishers. 99th place overall out of 177 finishers. Nice solid middle-of-the-pack finish. Nice solid age group finish - I actually could have gotten a medal for that because they gave them out to the top 5 in each age group. I just didn't stick around because I had no idea that I could possibly have been awarded anything! Nice solid first 10K, blowing my goal time out of the water!!