Well, its a good thing that I drove this course before running it, because it really wasn’t very similar to either the way it was described on the forum, or the way it looked on my topological maps. Steep hills (up/down, mostly up) for the first quarter, sure, but then rolling hills for the next quarter and a couple of good uphills mixed in with the downhills for the third. The fourth was, as suggested, pretty much dead flat.

Anyway, I got up with plenty of time to spare. Shower, shave, et cetera (any morning race that I take the time to shave before is one that I have plenty of time to spare for). I decided to drive to the Deep Eddy parking lot, near Mangia Pizza, and do a nice, easy run down to the boat docks as a warmup. It was hard to stay slow, but I kept it to a 10:40 pace for the 1.31 miles to the race. That really helped, and let me get some good stretching in afterwards since I was warm.

I actually had a bit too much time to kill. I did all the standard pre-race things - found the porta-potties with the shortest lines, got some water, did some stretching, even did a few drills running up a short hill forwards and backwards. It was a typical Austin race, with Evil in attendance doing his usual fine job providing music and announcements, but this time he was joined by Elvis singing along with his songs. It was a Chuy’s event, after all. I didn’t see anyone I recognized until just before the race, when I met up with Alex and we headed for the starting line.

I should take a minute to talk about the weather. It was only 68 degrees, on the warm side for an ideal race but not too bad, but the humidity was between 100% (7:53am) and 90% (8:53am) according to weather.com. Yeah, that sucked. Anyway, it was plenty muggy as we all packed into position, and quite a few folk were sweating even before the race started. A good reason to wear cool, breathable fabrics. I thought about wearing my sleeveless gazelle shirt, but decided not to (for a stupid reason - that group is pretty fast and I wasn’t sure that I felt like staking that claim in a race just yet) so I wore a short-sleeve shirt that was, unfortunately, quite a bit thicker than would have been ideal. Oh, well.

8:30am rolled around, and Elvis started us off with the traditional air-horn blast. We’d lined up about five rows back from the start - further up than I really wanted, but there were a ton of little kids around us so it was a classic case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I think that my starting position accurately reflected my final placement though, even if there were faster people behind us and slower ones ahead of us.

We roll around the first curve (50 feet or so) and immediately head uphill. There were two big, long hills in the first section of the course (and some smaller ones). This is where I paid the price for lining up too far in advance. I should have done the first mile a little slower, and made up the time on the easier sections. Still, I had planned to go out strong, and I did, clocking an 8:15 for the first mile (actual split). My Forerunner pace was a 7:38, so I was obviously not taking a very efficient course - something I continue to need to work on.

Mile two was pretty decent. This was where I thought I could get myself back under full control, as we turned South to go down Exposition, but there were some very real hills here as well and the best I could do was to get down to a comfortable 2-2 breathing pattern. I managed an 8:12 overall time for this mile, with an 8:07 Forerunner pace - since the race course had straightened out, I was running more efficiently. Grabbed two cups of water at the halfway point, dumped one on my head and tried to drink from the other one… I should practice racedrinking somehow, because I really couldn’t do it properly and almost certainly lost some time trying.

Mile three had one moderate uphill, one long downhill, and the flat stretch coming back along Lake Austin Blvd. This is where the humidity just did me in. I wish that I’d been wearing a lighter weave shirt. I wish that there’d been more water at the final turn to dump over myself. I wish that there had been some wind (other than the tailwind we must have had - there was no air motion relative to the runners at this point). But there wasn’t, and that’s just the way it goes sometimes. Even though this was the home stretch to the finish, it was my slowest mile with an 8:20 actual time. I tried to kick it up on a couple of occasions, since I had extra breathing capacity and some oomph left in my legs, but whenever I did I started getting really hot and lightheaded. This put me in a bit of a cranky mood, to be honest. Even the last tenth was only done at an 8:00 pace.

Final times: 8:15 - 8:12 - 8:20 - 0:48 = 25:35 total

So, on the one hand, I didn’t make my goal of a sub-25. On the other hand, this was a pretty brutal course and had really lousy weather, and I still managed to PR by over a minute - 1:16 actually. So I’m really pretty happy with it, now that I’ve had some time to sit back and reflect on it. Still, it woulda been nice if I had just shaved that :12 from each mile… or if the weather had cooperated and I could have turned in a 7:45 final mile, which I think my legs and lungs were willing to do.

Still… there’s always next time, at the ABIA 5K - a totally flat course out on the runways at Bergstrom airport. Let’s hope that the weather’s good for it!

Popularity: 1%