Pre-race: I arrived at 815 or so. I began to prepare. Gather the gel, the shoes, the car key and tie to shoe. Drink some water, douse myself with mosquito repellant.
A couple pulls up beside me as I am preparing myself while sitting in my car with the door open, tying my shoes. Lady says: Excuse me is it mosquito-ey out here? Do you know? Should I use spray?
Me (thinks she is asking for spray to borrow): Oh yeah, I have some spray.
Lady: No I have some, do I need it.
Me: Oh, I'm not sure, but I would just to be on the safe side.
On my warm up I had a guy sing-song say my number, then said look out, "351, 351, look out, here she comes." But I was running on the road towards him, he was doing some grape-vine leg criss cross thing, and I didn't realize what he was saying and so I stop suddenly and look over my shoulder to see if there was a car ready to run me over, since I was in the middle of the road. Then I realized he was just being funny. Runners are friendly folk. I met another older guy who was up with his wife from Anchorage. They drove up just to do this race. Then in the lines for the porta potties a group of friends were talking. I guess the guy behind me wasn't all that prepared. The one guy who wasn't running, said "ah 13 miles ain't nothing."
I said, "yeah, it's that last .1 that gets ya."
I've got a bad habit of eavesdropping and jumping into conversations. Beats keeping myself company. But that guy was the one who talked to me at the end in the finishing chute.
I've realized that it seems men of all ages talk to me, where are the girls?
MILE 1 - 10:29.72
MILE 2 & 3 - 22:11.51 (ave 11:05 each)
MILE 4 - 11:23.42
MILE 5 - 13:30.62 (includes bathroom break)
MILE 6 - 11:18.41
MILE 7 - 12:21.14
MILE 8 - 12:53.12 (enjoyed water, powerade and power gel these two miles)
MILE 9 - 12:43.38
MILE 10 - 12:25.33
MILE 11 - 13:58.50
MILE 12 - 12:34.18
MILE 13 - 13:07.57
MILE 13.1 - 20.81
Those were my watch splits. Which gave me an unoffical time of 2:39:17 and 13.2 miles :-) Guess I spend a bunch of time crossing the road and running in non linear directions to add another .1 mile.
Looking over the times I started within the pace that I wanted, actually a little slow, but I did get to mile 6 in 1:08, and being how my last 10K was 1:12, I will take that as something positive.
Around mile 3 I came upon the first person I've seen without headphones. I ran up beside her and said hi. She said, yay another short person...
Uh, okay. I was just happy that someone could hear me when I talked to them. So we ran together until my potty break. She sweetly asked if I was alright when I pulled off the trail to the portapotty. I said yeah, I just had to pee since before the starting gun went off... even though I had gone only 10 minutes prior!
After my potty break in the bright orange porta potty, I began to cheer on the 8 o' clock starters. They were passing us going in as we were going out. It was pretty cool. One girl asked, why are you cheering for me, I'm almost done? Yeah, well because it makes me feel better. I was boarderline obnoxious saying good morning and cheering on the early starters. I had made a comment to a guy I was hanging with for a small amount of time, that I was just waiting for someone to pop me in the head to get me to shut up. But I don't know maybe they liked it. I found out before I passed this particular fellow, that he had only been running for 3 weeks. WOW!
So, then another guy in a white T-shirt popped in with us. We were taking a walking break. He made the announcement that he had just come from the woods because "nature had been calling" and asked how long we had been running for. I said just under an hour.
The three week guy kept walking as the white t shirt guy hung with me when I began to run again. We ran and chatted through labored breathing for a little bit, he had run the same 10K as me a few weeks back and thought he felt pretty good and decided to go for the 1/2. He had finished in around 1:15 so he wasn't too far behind me. I tried to put in a surge and I was slowly eeking the pace faster to see how long he'd hang on. Not very nice of me, but I knew I was going too slow. He didn't last much longer and with a. "Whew, good luck" he slowed to a walk once again. I kept going. I also began to take walk breaks around this area. We are now just before mile 6. Normally we would go up over the wall of the dyke and run on the road, but this year we got to run on the dyke. Very cool, and the wind picked up, head wind of course. But it was kind of nice. This is where we came across a water stop and some firemen who wanted to know if I wished I had one of these (their dune buggy thingy) I said no that it would take all the fun out of the race to not use my own energy. We went through the water stop and then continued on the dyke to a turn around not far away. I finished a cup of water, and a cup of powerade to turn around and go through the water stop again, before going down into the flood plain again. I got more water and powerade, within 3 minutes whoo too much fluid. I knew I was hitting yet anohter water stop coming up, the one we passed through around mile 5, again and would be the last of the water until mile 11, so I took my other gel, even though my tummy was telling me no. I'm glad I did, that stuff is so thick, It wouldn't have gone down without the help of water.
So on I go keep going. I check my total time again at mile 10... 1:56 and some change... hmm I can still make it in 2:15, wait, uhhh... as I'm tiredly doing math in my head... that is 3 miles in 15 minutes... duhhhhhh..... HAHHAAHAHAHA... I realize that I'd have to run 5 minute miles for three consecutive miles... me and
Yep I've been SUPER!
S. was still there and was impressed that I wasn't pissed at my time. I told him I can't be pissed when I know I left it all out there unlike the other races where I felt I had more in me. I apologized for keeping him from practice.
I gave him a big sweaty hug and let him leave. I chatted some with the kids. They wanted to touch me and hang on me, but I was actually a bit unsteady on my feet.
So my mom drove the kids home, I already told you about the cold bath, that was really a waste of water, since I didn't spend so much time in it!
After some pizza and rest... and then sunday, all I did was eat. I'm still unusually hungry... not boredom munchies, but growling hunger.... crazy!
So there you go. My 13.1 mile adventure, more or less.
Dorkness OUT!
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