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Saturday, November 17, 2012

Middendorf's Manchac 10 mile race

Welp, the slowness hasn't gone away. 1:08:32 I think for 10 miles.
In a bid for speed, I put on a Swift brand bandaid this morning.

Since I was turning this race into a long run, I came with a lot of fuel. And I don't know how a baggie of olives got into my stash of gels and gu. The only thing I took was the Gatorade prime.

I love this race - even though it's 50 miles away, we always try to run it, mostly for the catfish dinner served afterwards. We drove up early so David and I could get some miles in before the race. I did almost 5 before we started; he did four.
Thursday I developed a calf strain that was tender when I landed on it, so I smeared it with NSAID drops before leaving the house. It still hurt, but I know it will do away.
 I wormed up to the line before the start, but I could NOT get close and started pretty far back. That was my first mistake. My second was forgetting to clear my Garmin from the warm-up! I didn't know what time I had when I started running, so even though I finally had the presence of mind to hit lap at mile 2 I didn't know my total time at all.
It turns out it was plenty slower than I thought - between starting so far from the front and then dodging runners for a whole mile, I estimate based on my Garmin data that my first mile was a 7:48. Ouch.
For some reason this was a small field doing the 10 mile today (plenty in the 5k, though); I worked to try to keep my fast friend Celeste in my sight but never even got a glance at the lead female - Rachel Booth, of Disney half marathon fame. She's the top-ranked runner in the state and the only fastie who showed up today for the ladies.
I did see her at the turn-around, of course, light years in front. Celeste was #2, I was #3. Once we settled down after the 5k turn around I'd picked a few people off who looked like they were over-exerting themselves. By mile 5 I'd also passed one lady who worried me; she's the local professional triathlete who on a good day smokes me.
The last 5 miles were straight into the wind, and even though I though I was picking up pace I wasn't. Actually my splits are pretty even, minus the first mile. The wind was loud in my ears and I couldn't hear if anyone was behind me. I finally glanced back and couldn't even see another female! Then I relaxed. I was anxious to place because there was prize money, and yep, I'm greedy like that.
I wasn't thrilled to death to see a 1:08 on the clock when I finished. I'm not sure how to shake this slowness. I did a few more miles after finishing - I ran back along the course, found David, and ran back with him. He impressed me! He had a great run, 8:20 average pace, and his last 2 miles were both under 8.
I ended up with close to 19 for the day and David did 16.
Prizes! Glass, plaque, and check!
Then my day was ruined. I was thrilled to enjoy the beautiful weather and delicious catfish with friends and was ready for a nice Saturday, when my stomach decided it didn't like catfish, beer, and Gatorade Pro 01 Prime (a gel-like drink I took before the race since I'd added miles to my day). I spent the rest of the day in stomachache agony wishing I was dead.

Lessons learned today: Get closer to the front. Fight the headwind harder. Race the race, don't save energy for the miles after. Recover better - I do think I'm not sufficiently recovering; my legs felt sore close to mile 9. And biggest lesson? No Gatorade Pro 01 Prime. It was the only new thing I tried and I haven't felt this sick in years.

6 comments:

  1. LOTS of good lessons learned there... If your first mile was a 7:48 and you ended up with a 1:08 you must have had some pretty fast miles in there somewhere to make up that time!

    I have often added miles in after a race to get in more miles but definitely don't save anything for those. Give the race EVERYTHING and you'll find that the easy junk miles will be fine with your leftovers. :-)

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  2. My gosh, run a race and go to school on running at the same time. Hopefully the next one will be better.

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  3. You ran a pretty awesome race. I think you need to think of the average pace without that first mile. THAT is your fitness level now:) And your legs were tired bc of the many miles you have on them:)

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  4. Nice job on the race, even though you said you ran slow, sounds like you had a good one.

    Lucky for you on being able to buy the wider toe box men's kinvara, I wish I had that option. I love that shoe, just a bummer that it won't work for me.

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  5. I did the race too. I took those fuel shots before and it made me sick before too. The worst part about it was that I was on a plane when I got sick

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  6. I tried the Prime before too and It made me sick on a plane. That was exciting.

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