I just did one of the most fun races I think I’ve ever had. Sure, the weather was lousy (73 degrees with 96% humidity), and the terrain was hilly (to say the least), but I had a good plan, executed it fairly well, and enjoyed myself. That, to me, makes it a good race.

I had decided that since I wasn’t feeling particularly confident, that I would do this one as a well supported hilly training run for the first half, and then bring the speed up on the second half. My goal was to do about a 9:30 pace in the beginning, and an 8:30 once the kick hit. Before the race I had a granola bar and some powerAde, and did about a one mile warmup jog (at a very slow pace) and some light stretching.

Note: there was an issue between the mile marker distances and those reported by my GPS, so I’m not going to post ‘em. Either I use the GPS, which looks about right but has the race coming in at 10.25 miles, or I use my manual “Lap” points which should be perfect and have a slow mile that was all downhill and a moderate one that had a steep uphill in it. Very weird.

Mile 1: We start out, and I make sure to place myself a couple of minutes back in the pack to try to lessen my temptation to rabbit ahead. Of course, this means that I spend the first quarter mile or so dodging slower people, but it really wasn’t too bad. The first mile is purely within the Riata business park: its a slight uphill but since that means it’ll be downhill at the finish, I’m pretty happy. About a 9:45 pace.

Mile 2: This one was pretty representative of the “flat” miles - running through a neighborhood with gentle rolling hills, noticable but nothing too severe. I sped up quite a bit without the traffic problems to about 9:15.

Mile 3: More of the same really. I’m enjoying myself quite a lot at this point, and everything’s feeling pretty comfortable - which it should at this pace, quite frankly. This one was about 9:30, right on target.

Mile 4: Some serious downhills here. The first half was rolling, then we came around a corner and just headed down. I noticed that a lot of people were holding back; I didn’t fly down, but I was definately passing folk pretty well.

Mile 5: This started out with a much steeper downhill, but nothing too challenging. It felt good to think about those people falling behind me. Then we turned right onto Scotland Wells drive, also known as “Scotland Wall.” Wow - that was steep. I mean really steep. I ended up alternating between running and walking, but even going slowly my heart was pounding somewhere North of 180. This was my only mile that took more than 10 minutes, even with the big downhill leading into it.

Mile 6: Some shallower (yet still very real) hills throughout this mile, including one downhill that was both steep and slippery, although thankfully not terribly long. I walked for about 20 seconds on the worst of the hills here as well. I don’t think I got my pace back until the end of the mile. I was planning to kick up the pace from the start of this mile, but that wasn’t going to happen today.

Mile 7: We’re mostly back to the normal rolling hills at this point. Halfway through this mile we had the last of the big uphills, which was fairly steep but not really too bad compared to the ones we’d already done. No walking this time. After the last hill, I decided to bring on the speed. Overall pace was about 9:00.

Mile 8: Same ol’, same ol’, as far as the course goes, except now I’m running a bit faster. I’m feeling pretty good, even if my toes are starting to burn a little (time for new shoes all around probably). Overall pace here was an 8:35. From the start of this mile I’m passing people slowly but surely, and it feels absolutely great to have strength at the end of the race.

Mile 9: More passing. Here we were just running on a fairly flat road, and I was able to pick up a bunch of people. I felt great! For some reason though, when I tried to go over about an 8:30 pace, I started to feel dehydrated - perhaps from the fact that I wasn’t cooling efficiently? Maybe next time I need to dump water over my head whenever I do a humid race. Anyway, I could run at 8:30 without issue, but since I didn’t care for the cold shivers I got at any faster speeds I just kept it there. I did get passed by one faster runner here.

Mile 10: Even though I didn’t want to, I walked about 10 seconds at the beginning of the mile to drink a cup of gatorade. I wasn’t feeling too happy about the whole heatstroke thing. Still, after that point it was all downhill, so I just picked up my heels and ran it in - at about the same 8:30 pace. This meant that my legs and lungs felt really good, I was absolutely heat-loss limited at this point. I felt so good, in fact, that not only did I do a bit of a kick down to 7:30 on the last tenth of a mile, but my last 15 seconds were at a flat out sprint, probably about 6:30 pace at that point. I literally passed 10 people during that bit like they were standing still!

Bottom line? I missed my goal by three minutes with a 1:33:02 overall result. My first half pace was 9:30, my second half 9:06 for some serious negative splits. I had a wonderful time, and felt good enough five minutes afterwards to do a one mile cooldown run with Bear. Then, when I got back, I swapped dogs (my wife had brought them down to watch and took them for a long walk in a new place - always good if you’re a dog) and took Sabrina out for another mile. These were slower, but still in the 9:30 range.

Could I have gone faster? Yes, even in the condition that I was in. I could probably have turned in a sub-1:30 with better race management, but that’s still something I’m learning how to do. On a cooler day with more confidence, but no more training, I might have been able to do more like 1:25. I most definately have my race-mojo back though, which feels good - damn good.

Check out some more experienced opinions of the race here, with quotes from Gilbert Tuhabonye (the winner with a blistering 56:55 time) and Greg McMillan, of running calculator fame:

T-Bone had won this race last year too, but was about three minutes slower on Sunday. “I’m just starting to race,” said Tuhabonye, “so I was using this race as a benchmark. I wanted to run 5:30 miles, but the course was very hard and I couldn’t maintain my speed over the hills. But I felt great which was the most important thing for me.”

Said McMillan, “I just couldn’t get over the hills. They were so tough that at one point I wanted to walk.”

You know what? If these guys thought it was tough, I don’t feel bad about my time at all :-)

EDIT: This picture gives a good taste of the Scotland Wells hill. This one shows me about halfway up (dark green shirt in the middle).

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