I took 5th, which is almost 1st!

Ok, so it’s an inside joke, and skips to the end of the story.  Let me start from the start.

This past Sunday was the USA Fit half marathon in Sugar Land TX.  As I stated before I wasn’t real excited about either the race or how well I would do.  Things didn’t get any better race morning, when we got to the race site only to find it windy, in the 50’s, and raining.

Because of the weather contestants were having difficulties getting to the start.  This caused first a 15 minute, then 45 minute delay.  Of course this information wasn’t dispersed until after I’d done my pre-race warm up, bathroom break, and GU consumption.  Freezing to death in shorts and a T-shirt, I went back to the car to wait for the starting gun.

Sitting in the car, shaking, and watching the rain fall, I had serious reservations about running the race.  I thought for sure I would catch a cold, and it just didn’t look that fun.  In the end it was the finisher T-shirt that got me out of the car and to the starting line.  Who would have thought that a $15 shirt would get me out in that horrible weather for a couple of hours of misery!  I also decided that it was raining too hard to take my iPhone with me for music.  Since I always run with music I wasn’t sure how I would occupy my mind for 2 hours.

Standing at the starting line I knew I had to go to the bathroom again, but the lines were too long and moving too slowly.  Since this was just a “training race”, I figured I would stop at the first open port-a-potty, hopefully at mile 1.

I hit mile #1 right at the pace I’d hoped for, stopped for the potty, and continued on my way.  I didn’t think my pit stop had lasted that long (although I REALLY had to go!), but at mile #2 I found I’d lost a full minute.  I ignored the lost time and continued running at my planned pace.  There were people with watches at each mile marker counting off the average pace (total time/miles run) and I slowly made up time.

At mile #6 I picked up the pace a bit as scheduled.  The plan was to drop 30 seconds per mile, but since I was already running faster than I’d planned for the first six miles (to make up the deficit) it was only about 15 seconds.  I noticed the quicker pace, but was still within my comfort zone and wasn’t hurting much.

The spectators that were wonderful early on really disappeared around mile #9.  The racers had also thinned.  I hadn’t really noticed myself passing people so I assumed that we had just naturally spread out.  I caught up to one runner that had left his friend and passed me miles ago.  I’d pass him, then he would sprint past me.  We ran like that for a while.  At one point I remembered an article I’d read about how it would come to this during the race and I would have to decide if I wanted it more than he.  Finally, after running together stride for stride, he dropped back.  I heard him talking behind me with his friend, the one he’d left behind, about having one more sprint left in him.  I was determined not to let him beat me!

At mile 11 I kicked it into my final gear.  This was, I thought, as fast as I could run for the final 2+ miles.  This last leg was into the wind.  I was getting pretty tired, and my legs were getting cold making the muscles harder to move.  There were some baby hills making it hard to maintain my pace.  I thought to myself that I could explain to coach that I really was working harder even if the pace didn’t show it!  I passed some more people before making the final turn into the last 2/10 miles.  I caught up to a couple more runners.  I didn’t want to pass them this close to the finish, but they were going too slowly and forced me to pass.

Crossing the finish line I checked my time.  It was faster than my goal time, but not as fast as I really wanted.  I think the weather played a role in that, but it is also very early in the season.

I grabbed a bite to eat and headed for home to get warm, without really checking the race results.  Later that night, while waiting for the results to be posted, I checked the results from the previous year.  If things played out similarly I would have medaled, except I didn’t stick around for the award ceremony!  It was a very stressful for night for me, waiting for the results to be posted. 

When the results finally came out, I’d finished 5th and as we all know:  5th is almost 1st!