Nichols road is longggggg.

When I began the year training for this race, my goal was just to finish but over the last month or so I was really hoping for a sub 2 hours and felt it was probably w/in my grasp as the day started. My last running race was this one last year, but only the 5k portion, so I knew what to expect for the first 3 miles and Bobby gave me a scouting report on the rest.

I consciously tried to keep my pace down for the first couple of miles, I didn't want to panic after my bonehead start and over pace myself just to blow up half way through. Got to the first turnaround at about mile 1.5 feeling great til I made that turn north and damn, I realized how hard that wind was blowing. There were alot of people in front of me that I tried to duck behind to block some of the wind, but since I was so far back, I couldn't find anyone running the same pace.

At mile 3, I checked in with the clock and found out, to my utter disappointment, I was at 29+ minutes. Shit! Really? Felt like I was pushing alot harder than that. With 3+ miles to go into that wind, I began to resign myself that I might not be getting the sub 2 I was hoping for. I also realized that my watch was ~ 30 seconds off of the race clock due to my tardy start. Dammit, now I have to do math :) . At this point, I remembered a note my daughters gave me the night before which said:

"It's ok if you don't come in 1st(yeah like that's gonna happen:) ), your always number one to us". With this new perspective, I carried on.

Next 3+ miles was pretty much more of the same until the turnaround at about mile 6.5. Wow, this felt awesome heading south again, things were looking up heading into mile 7. I decided to just lay it all out and try and get as close as I could to 1:30 by mile 10 and salvage my goal. I ran 8:07, 7:38 and 8:16 for miles 7, 8 and 9 getting me to 1:32 going into the final 5k, pretty much right where I wanted to be but in the back of my mind I knew I emptied the tank over the last few miles and the small climb back to the college.

I started pacing off a girl in the ninth mile that I was pretty certain would get me to the finish line where I wanted to be. I fought the good fight til the final turn around at mile 11.5 and back into the wind. Game Over, couldn’t keep up with pace girl as she went off into the distance and I trudged along to the entrance of the college and the finish line.


Well, getting to the starting line on time might be a good idea :)
I clearly need to work on pacing but the bottom line is this is about where I am. Next year I'll look for a big improvement at this race.

Sat on the curb for a few minutes had a bannana and some H2O.


My own stupidity :)