5/21/11 (Saturday) The Race (and other activities)

This morning started early, 4:00 a.m.  We got ready and actually arrived about 15 minutes earlier than planned, and found that hundreds got there even earlier than us.  Many of the buses were already full.  This did not make me nervous as I knew we would still make it up okay.  We found the last two seats on one of the buses and soon started the 20-25 minute trip.  It is always amazing that race directors make participant get to buses so dang early when the participants will have a minimum of one hour (many times more than that) before the race starts.  But they have to prepare for the what ifs so I understand, I just don't like getting up at 4:00 a.m. : )

So race start time was 7:00.  We got to Eden around 6:00 a.m.  They had fire pits going in barrels.  It had rained the night before so some of the wood was wet.  Wood+moisture=smoky fires.  Sort of hard to get to close to them.  After about a half hour or so we found Bill and Shelley, Heidi's sister.  Though Bill does not get to run as much as he likes, he is a good runner on relatively little training.  Shelley does run, but she also does triathlons.  She has done at least two half-Ironmans in Boise, ID.  I admire anybody who can swim.

The organizers did a good job of keeping the crowd entertained.  As 7:00 a.m. approached we were directed to start lining up.  They had markers for where people should start according to the overall time they expected to finish in.  A really nice idea, but in the end people line up wherever they want.  Most people who are slower are courteous enough to line up further back.  7:00 a.m. came and went without us starting.  We finally started at about 7:10 or 7:11.  It is not good to start a race late but you have to roll with whatever comes your way.

I thought if I could stay with Bill most of the way I would be doing well.  About 45 seconds later, as he pulled away, I thought, "I can still do well."  To my amazement I kept him in sight for most of the first 3-4 miles (without the aide of binoculars ; ).  There is a hill going into mile 3 (I think) that is pretty good.  The nice thing is it is the only real hill of the whole course.  I got to the beginning of the canyon and started feeling pretty well recovered from that hill.  The canyon itself is about 5 miles long.  I was running by myself the whole time.  There were a couple of people that passed me, and I passed several people.  I felt so good, and felt like I was just flying down that canyon.  Every time I looked at my Garmin I was somewhere in the range of a 6:15-6:27 minute mile.  (Unfortunately, I did not have the presence of mind to clock each of my miles but I can see the confirming results on the graph overall.)  As I got to the bottom of the canyon, I could tell my legs were still tired from the lack of rest since the last half and the continued training, almost 4 months in all with no true rest periods.  I did not know how much longer I could keep it up, and knew that with the remaining course being mostly flat my time would slow.  As you exit the canyon, almost immediately you get on the river parkway.  It is really scenic, and really windy (meaning curving, not blowing).  I was tired and struggling to keep my pace.  I knew I had slowed, but was still doing pretty well.  I think maybe one or two people passed me, but no others.  I passed one guy who was stopped, not sure why.  Within minutes he passed me up again only to stop not too far down the road.  I figured he would just pass me again, but I never saw him again.  With about two miles to go, I saw a female runner about 300 yards in front of me.  I would see her just at opportune times when the windy pathway afforded me a view.  I thought she was way too far ahead of me for me to catch up.  But each time I rounded a place where the viewing was a little more open, she was just a little closer.  I made it to the final stretch, which is always one of the happiest places to be.  But it was still about a half mile to the finish.  It was a very long half mile.  My legs were rubbery by this point.  I was having real trouble maintaining my speed.  I heard a guy behind me say to his running partner, "We gotta catch this guy" and within a minute they had passed me.  That was good for me.  I determined nobody else was going to pass me.  I was able to pick up the pace slightly.  I really was so focused on running that I had lost sight, quite literally, of everything else.  At roughly mile point 12.9 I was surprised to see the same female runner that had been 300 yards in front of me.  Now she was within 25 feet of me.  There was very little race to run, I was tired, and I thought, just let it go. But then with every step I kept creeping up on her but I knew I would have to throw it in high gear. At about mile point 13 I decided, "I can do this."  So I just threw it open with everything my rubbery legs would give me.  I came up right at her side and she made a crucial mistake.  She looked at me.  Never look at a runner as they pass you.  It only gives them confidence.  I really thought that once I reached her, since we were less than five seconds from the finish, she would also throw it in high gear and barely nudge me out.  But there was no corresponding approach.  I beat her by one second at the finish.  There is a photo of me passing her that I will have to get.  I wish they had taken the one where she looked at me.  I would have paid a lot for that photo.  I could see her number in the photo.  She was only 18.  She ran a great race obviously, but yes, it feel great to beat somebody more than 30 years my junior.  Overall time? 1:32:34.  Yep, I PR'd again.  I am very excited about that.  I did not know if I could PR in two halfs only one month apart.

So how did I do overall?  I came in 44th out of 2,379 runners.  Amazingly I came in fourth place for my age group (out of 58 runners).  Though I am very pleased with fourth place, that is not what I am amazed with.  It is that by the 44th place my age group was well represented with almost 10% of the runners.

And just when you think "Why do I need to learn math, I'll never use it when I'm older", I looked at my overall pace a 7:01 minute mile.  However, that did not make sense since my overall SLC half-marathon time was a 7:06 minute mile pace and that was only 21 seconds slower than this.  That should be less than a two second per mile pace difference.  But then going over all the data I could see that this race was actually 13.21 miles, exactly one-tenth of a mile longer than the SLC half, which was exactly a half.  It is not uncommon for races to be either longer or shorter than the official length (e.g., 5k, 10k, etc).  But that meant that I had closer to my goal of under 1:30:00 than I thought.  Yes, I will go with the official race time, but if you do the math and figure it out, my 13.1 mile time would have been 1:31:36.

One final note, here is a great reason to have a reliable timing device.  My, along with many others, race results were not coming in.  They had a kiosk set up to see the times within about 30 minutes of your finishing, but many of ours were not coming through.  The problem they said was that they could not get our start times.  They had our end times, just not the start times.  When they finally posted the results 24 hours later, my "gun time" was the same of my chip time.  For halfs I never start at the front and I know I hit the button right as I passed over the start.  They showed my coming in 19 seconds slower than my Garmin.  Still a PR, but it wasn't the truth.  It turns out many, MANY, people were in the same predicament as I was.  A number of people complained and the company "looked into it."  They said they finally figured it out, but there was no change.  I emailed them and they said our times simply did not record when we passed over the start line.  I found out this was the first time this company had been used for this event and the timing device is relatively new.  They stated to me via email, "It is common in any race for 1-3% of the timing devices to not record at the start.  This is particularly true when you are near the start and there are so many runners crossing at once."  You know what I say to that?  Denial reigns supreme.  Yeah, all my running friends and I who have been in bigger races than this have never had this happen.  And I found a minimum of 10% of the runners for who the timing device did not work (I got tired of looking after the first 300).  But, they were nice enough to accept my Garmin as the official time.  So, it really is hard to tell if I did as well as I did in the overall standings.  But I did do really well, which I am very pleased with.  I also have reason to believe my time was faster than the 1:32:34.  While I am very good about starting my Garmin at the point I pass over the start, I am not as good about the finish.  I remember, but I want to make sure I have actually passed before I stop it.  I have yet to be right on, my official times have always been faster. But I am please with the 1:32:34 and will continue my quest for the sub 1:30:00.

Then in the afternoon I went for a 27 mile bike ride : )

Total running mileage for week = 33.21
Total cycling mileage for week = 40.55