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 Run
Comments: Great run up until about mile 8. I was cruising at about 8:25/miles and feeling very comfortable. Even after Cardiac hill I was feeling good. So at mile 8 I started to think about going for sub 1:50. I figured if I could hold 8:25's until mile 11, I would hammer the last 5k and go for it. Well that plan of attack unraveled almost as quick as it was hatched. Just after mile 8 my IT band started barking at me. The weird thing was that it was worse on the uphills, but felt better on the downhills. Its usually opposite of that. Also at mile 8 was when the endless assault of hills came. I struggled to stay under 9:00/miles and by the last few hills I was barely moving forward. The only thing that kept my mind off of how tired I was, was how bad my IT band hurt. So needless to say by mile 11 I was not thinking about making a charge, I was just trying to make it to the finish line. Those Olympic rings couldn't come soon enough, but eventually they did, and as they got closer I realized...that they were not the finish line!! What the hell? The finish line was another 2 tenths of a mile down the road, which was odd b/c my garmin said 13.1 right under the rings. How hard would it have been to make the finish right under the rings? So I staggered the rest of the way to cross the line, get my medal and my blanket and try to stay upright. What would you do differently?: Not much. I gave it as much effort as I could. Just continue to work on endurance so my body is more comfortable at longer distances. I felt so beat up after this race. And I was crazy sore the next day. I mean like weight workout in the gym sore, not normal running sore.  Post race
Warm down: Got some powerade and water, bananas and crackers. Talked with a few people briefly and then started the death march to the Marta station, and then back to the hotel. That was the longest 45 minutes of my life. The hot shower at the hotel was heaven sent. If check out wasn't at 12, I'd still be in there. What limited your ability to perform faster: Hills. Gravity to be more specific. Event comments: Good overall experience for me, not just including the race. We'll probably do it again next year. Last updated: 2008-10-30 12:00 AM
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United States
Atlanta Track Club
33F / 1C
Sunny
Overall Rank = /
Age Group = 30-34
Age Group Rank = 0/
The night that went on forever. 3 solid hours of sleep. Maybe less. So we stayed at the host hotel the night before the race since we were heading to the grandparents for Thanksgiving after the race. This was the first time for my boys, age 4 and 18 mos, to stay in a hotel. So there was lots of looking out the window at all the action on the street, lots of wanting to go up and down on the elevators, and lots of jumping back and forth on the two double beds.
Anyway, we're all settled in and at about 11pm, I was still trying to get to sleep when the youngest wakes up and starts wailing. So my wife puts him in bed with her, and I move over to the older one's bed. The younger one tosses and turns for an hour and about about 12:00, the older one starts breathing really hard and lets out a scream. I wake him up and he says he was having a bad dream about spiders. So I take him in to the bathroom to get some water and we talk about how everybody has bad dreams and that they aren't real and that he should think about happy things before going back to sleep. We go back to bed but he won't put his feet under the covers b/c of the spiders. We eventually turn on the TV and find some cartoons for him to watch to get his mind off the spiders. By this time the younger one is fully awake and wants to look out the window and say "car" everytime a car goes by.
During all of this I'm in and out of sleep and starting to worry that I won't get any rest all. Finally at close to 3am everybody is asleep, including me. My eyes pop open after what seemed like 8 hours of sleep and I fully expected to look at the clock and see 9am. I frantically hit the glow button on my watch to see that it was only 4:50. I figured I might as well get up and get going. So I get dressed, eat a power bar and drink some Infinit and coffee, and head out for the race.
I ran a few laps of a parking lot of a grocery store near the start. Then I found my corral and waited.