- John Martin - 1:45:09 (8 min pace)
- Marc - 1:55:47 (8 min 46 sec pace)
- Me - 2:00:45 (9 min 9 sec pace)
- John Jost (full marathon) - 3:27:40 (7 min 54 sec pace)
That's right: I missed my #4 "dream" goal by 45 seconds! Still, I wasn't upset, but rather very pleased with myself. I didn't expect to get that close to that goal. Had I been feeling better, I might've been able to shave off 45 seconds. In any case, I was proud of myself.
Now the fun part of the story. So the marathoners had to park at the finish line, and the half-marathoners at the starting line. So John offered to give me a ride to my car if could help him find his car. Mind you, he had parked at like 4 o'clock in the morning, so he couldn't remember much except that he pulled up to a grassy curb. I figured that'd narrow it down considering there wasn't much grass in the lot. So we start looking, and we're not having any luck. John is hurting (I think physically from the run and emotionally from not being able to find his car after running 26.2 miles!), and we stop a couple of times for him to compose himself. It felt like an episode of Seinfeld! We ended up walking around the entire mall and eventually found his car like 10 feet in the other direction from where we started (ok, perhaps that's an exaggeration)!
So I get my car, and we head off we go to our Ultimate games even though neither of us have any intention of playing. This was a make-up day from earlier in the season which was cancelled because of weather, and ironically our teams were playing against each other. Both of us were bummed because we wanted to play against each other (even though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to keep up with him). I joked that day that I could finally cover him because he was in a lot more pain than I was.
It turns out our team had a lot of players out, and it looked like we might have to go "savage" (with no substitutes) unless I played. I told them I would play if they needed me to, but I knew that Tim, Mike and Lori were planning on coming after their relay. They showed up shortly after the game started, so we were okay. They were tired but were able to play (there's a big difference between 10k and 13 miles (21k)). I just sat there and watched, but we played amazing! It was the best performance I'd seen from our team, and I really wanted to get out there. But I could see they were fine without me, and there was no point in risking an injury. Our team was getting tired later on (we still didn't have very many subs), but they finished strong, and we won by reaching 15 (first time this season) to their, I want to say, 5-7 points. Needless to say, we dominated them, and I was very surprised because their record was similar to ours, and I expected it to be a close game. Maybe they were really reliant on John. In any case, it was an awesome win. Between games, I went and grabbed my running shoes (I left my cleats at home since I had no intention of playing) in case they got tired again and need a sub for a point or two. The second game was quite the opposite. They never called on me to come in, but we got slaughtered ... getting 15 put on us for only the 2nd time this season.
Afterwards, we hung out for a good while before I had to leave because I was starving! I had totally forgotten about lunch ... and having just run a half-marathon, I was definitely hungry. I stopped by Chipotle on my way home for the first time in quite a while. I stopped going there after visiting this website and learning that my normal burrito contained 141% of my recommended daily value of sodium, 61% of the calories, 81% of the total fat and 92% of the saturated fat. In any case, I figured I could make an exception since I had quite the active morning. Even though I was starving, I still couldn't finish the whole thing. I started getting a headache shortly before I left ultimate and also started coughing, and I only felt worse as the day went on. I ended going to bed pretty early, but the coughing wouldn't stop. I got really hot (yea, I know, I'm pretty hot already ;-) ...) and tried sleeping downstairs where it was cooler. Unfortunately, my coughing fits kept me up most of the night. I ended up getting up around 3am and started looking at the race results and doing some statistics on it since I obviously wasn't going to get sleep. I'll spare you the details and just say that I ended up calling in sick Monday and just rested. I felt better as the day went on. I got some sleep that night, and I went to work the next day (where of course everyone thought I took the day off because of the race ... which I guess was indirectly true). I wore my medal around that morning, but it's actually pretty heavy, so that didn't last long. I was pretty proud. :-)
I got better as the week progressed but was never really completely over it by the time the weekend came. My friends and I went camping Friday and Saturday night. I ended up driving, and I felt so bad for my poor Honda Accord. The last couple of miles were pretty rough, and my car had no business on there. There were a couple of times I wondered what the hell I was doing driving that road. I scraped the bottom of my car a couple of times, and I just sat there apologizing to my car. For the last little bit, D was out guiding me to avoid the larger rocks which worked pretty well. Finally, we reached a point where both of us looked at each other and concluded there was no way my car was making it. I just backed down to a nearby campsite and just parked there. We just walked the rest of the way which was like 10 feet from where I turned around (ok, maybe not 10 feet, but you get the idea). It turns out they were at a closer campsite, and the original one involved driving through a small stream. Yes, THROUGH the stream! I'm just glad I found that spot to park where I did.
The next few days were a lot of fun, but it was pretty cold. If you weren't by the fire or in your sleeping bag, it was freezing. I think it was in the 40s at night and 70s during the day. I was wearing pretty much every layer I brought. We didn't really do a whole lot except go on a short hike on Saturday (there was still tons of snow on the higher trails). It was still a lot of fun, though. Our tent was on a bit of an incline, so it was interesting because we kept sliding down our sleeping bags during the night. Saturday night, we crammed another into our tent, so we were literally shoulder-to-shoulder ... still sliding downwards into our sleeping bags. It was kind of funny but of course also uncomfortable. Still, I slept pretty well both nights. I was afraid my coughing (which was sporadic, but still surfaced at times) would keep everyone up. Luckily, it stayed under control. We pretty much woke up and left Sunday morning.
After going home and taking well-needed showers, we went to John's for a good carbo-loading dinner. We tried to figure out how we were going to get to the Bolder Boulder because of all the traffic. There were supposed to be close to 50,000 runners! We toyed with the idea of taking the bus, of going there that night and either staying at a friend's place or car-camping, but eventually decided just to leave early in the morning. D had the idea a few weeks earlier that we dress us as the Coyote and the Roadrunner for the race, but we never found time to get that together. Somehow they convinced me to stay at John's place to save time, so I went home and grabbed my things, came back to John's and crashed in an empty room.
We got there in the morning with ease. Parking wasn't a big deal, and we got there with plenty of time. Cara came with us to cheer us on, and we took some pre-race pics: one normal one, and one with our "tough guy" faces which is friggin' hilarious! I can't look at it without cracking up!
I started cramping up by the time our wave started. D and I were in the same wave, and we kept together for the first half of the race. There were lots of waves separated by a few minutes. I thought this would help prevent crowding, but unfortunately, it didn't take us long to run into the wave in front of us (even though we were both sub-60 waves). We were forced to weave through everyone which was annoying. He pulled ahead about two-thirds of the way through, but I figured he wouldn't be able to keep up the pace. He was fluctuating speeds a lot where as I was staying pretty consistent. My goal was to finish under 50 minutes which translated to 8 minute miles. Unfortunately, I never really timed myself, so I didn't know what a 8 minute pace was like, so I had to pretty much wing it. I still had a runny nose, so I was breathing through my mouth a lot which dried it out quite a bit. Unfortunately, drinking on-the-go was still an art I hadn't mastered, so that slowed me down.
They had all these "entertainers" along the race route from dancers to bands. At one house, they had a slip-n-slide set up, and by the time I realized it was for the racers, I had already passed it. The next thing I know, I see D in front me all wet. I just had to laugh. It was pretty impressive that he only lost a little bit of ground by going through there. In fact, he pulled ahead of me pretty good after that, so maybe it was good for him. I overheard from some people at the start that there were two big hills around mile 4 and at the end leading into Folsom Field. It was at this first hill that I caught up to D significantly. Unfortunately, my side started hurting, so I had to slow down shortly afterwards. I had to watch him pull away as I slowed my pace. I think I probably had too big of a breakfast. I'll have to keep that in mind for the future. I still maintained a decent pace as I went up the final hill. A lot of people slowed down which I took as an opportunity to pass a lot of them. As I went through the final stretch, I heard John Jost in the stands call out my name (he was in a wave starting about 5 minutes before ours). I crossed the finish line and wondered how they were going to time us since we didn't have timing chips. At the finish, there were all these people frantically writing down our bib numbers (and I found out later, punching them into a little electronic device). I glanced up at the scoreboard and saw the time was 8:27 and since our wave started at 7:39, I knew I had about a 48 minute time and thus reached my goal despite the cramping. I was pretty happy, and I met up with the rest of the gang at our predetermined meeting point. I saw John Martin as well who was apparently waiting to snap a picture of me as I finished. He was surprised when I came up behind him. He was in a much earlier wave.
It turns out that Cara missed John and D as they finished was ready for me after she saw D. So, she got a decent pic of me at the closing stretch. D, John, John, Cara and I walked around and got our goody bags along with other free stuff including Häagen-Dazs ice cream. We went back into the stadium later to catch Tonya, Shannon and Lyndsey finish. Their wave started around 8:30, and we knew they wouldn't be done in less than an hour. We got there kinda late, so we couldn't get a pic of them. Apparently, they too didn't get their secret costumes in order because they weren't wearing them. Supposedly, they "forgot" them but still wouldn't tell us what they were. So we got the final results that night:
- John Jost - 00:40:33 (6 min 31 sec pace)
- John Martin - 00:44:28 (7 min 9 sec pace)
- D - 00:47:05 (7 min 33 sec pace)
- Me - 00:48:08 (7 min 45 sec pace)
- Shannon - 01:01:22 (9 min 52 sec pace)
- Tonya - 01:06:31 (10 min 42 sec pace)
- Lyndsey - 01:06:33 (10 min 42 sec pace)
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