Woooowwweeewwoooo! C'mon, just imagine that's typical alien sound. Aliens and oddities seem to go together and I'm becoming a believer. For the second year in a row, something strange happened when I booked my hotel room for this race. Last year, standing at the desk to check in only to find out they no record of my reservation, was a shock. But, hey sometimes strange things happen. This year trying to be ahead of the game, the day before I decided to double check my reservation, only to find out somehow I booked a room for the month before! Normally, I'd blame gremlins, but twice, it's probably more fitting to blame the martians.
Oh those martians. If there are such things as martians, and I'm not claiming or denying, I firmly believe they'd be of superior intelligence and they'd stay away from marathons! I on the other hand, continue to prove that I lack intelligence, because I continue to find myself at the starting line of these things. Under-trained, warming temps, engage hyperdrive.
The first few miles were pleasant. The temps actually started out cool, and for me to say that is saying something. By mile four, I found my pace and settled in to put me right on if not a little below PR pace. While I had no illusion that I'd be able to PR, at this point I felt confident it wouldn't be as horrible as I had feared. With the looping early in the course, it was nice to see familiar faces. One guy was wearing the same shirt as me and the first time seemed to be an acknowledgement, second time seemed like old friends, and the third and last time felt like good-bye.
I had told myself simply to run with how I felt and I mentally told myself since I really didn't have any expectations for this race, not to check my watch at all. Well, I made it to mile sixteen before I got curious. I felt good and fast, so I thought it was odd that when I checked it said the last mile was 8:07. Next mile came in at 8:17. Those damn aliens, are they messing with me? I still feel good, why am I getting slower? This is where runner's logic is slow to kick in (or is this the sign of why I keep ending up at the start of these marathons?), but it hit me I'm not getting slower but it's getting warmer, much warmer.
Miles sixteen to twenty seemed to take forever, maybe I was caught in a black-hole. Somewhere around twenty, I checked my watch one more time and saw that I was still two minutes ahead of my PR pace, but with the final six miles to go, I knew I had no chance of maintaining those two minutes. Without a chance of getting a PR, the first intelligent decision I made was throwing in the towel and telling myself there wasn't much point beating myself up in the final six miles. It was already hot, my legs were tired, just survive and call it a day.
It was a nice surprise rounding one of the last corners to find CT sitting there waiting for me. I think I half expected to see daggers shooting from her eyes as I was walking, but she was smiling. My feeling is she already knew I'd be struggling with as warm as it got. We had a nice walk towards the finish as I told her about how it went. We parted ways before the last road, so she could watch our doctor friend finish.
The last stretch to the finish, I made it a point to run it, just because of the people watching and cheering. Luckily, I had some spurs or something because I was able to fight off the charlie horses, it wasn't pretty. Finishing, I couldn't even make it back to CT. I made it about halfway down the finish line and setup shop there, my legs were done. For as bad of shape as my legs were, this race gave me something I had never seen before. I saw four people either getting put directly into an ambulance or put on a golf cart to get taken to one. Then I saw another on the ground with a police officer helping. As if that wasn't enough, I turn to look up and see our doctor friend walking in the crowd towards me, not coming down the finish line as I'd expect. Turns out she had ended up passing out too and the police gave her a ride back. Not exactly how you want or expect to end a race. Very glad our doctor didn't have anything worse than pride getting a little bruised (which by the way never happened, we swore to never speak of this again). I'm only saying this, because after the martians use their probe on us, we'll never remember anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment