Its odd. My overall pace at this race - 8:42 - was almost identical to my 8:41 pace at Motive; and yet the way that I felt after they ended could not have been more different. Admittedly, this time I had my ankle to worry about (its sore, but not painful, and yes it did bother me at times during the race) and I hadn’t been running much the last two weeks because of it, but still. I had hoped for an 8:20 overall pace, so this was quite disappointing.

I got to the race a good 75 minutes before the starting gun. This gave me plenty of time to get situated, find the bathrooms, and meet up with Gilbert (who won), Alex (who had an amazing 1:29 time), and others before our warmup started. We met an hour before the start and spent the next 45 minutes getting ready for the race.

First, we did about 1.5 miles of jogging at about a 12:00 pace, just enough to get the blood flowing. I was wearing my jacket and warmup pants, but by the end of this I was beginning to feel quite overdressed. I had brought a long sleeved shirt, just in case, and not only was I in no danger of needing it I was actually lamenting the fact that I hadn’t thought to bring a singlet! Anyway, after that we did our regular series of drills, and about 10 minutes of stretching. One more bathroom break and some more strides, and it was time to go!

I purposefully set myself back about a minute from the start this time, trying not to go out too fast. Considering how quickly we did get going, it was probably a good thing I was as far back as I was. Commentary follows after the mile splits:

Mile 1: 8:09 - Mile 2: 8:18 - Mile 3: 8:14

At this point we’ve turned off the main road and onto Lindell, one of the back roads that made up the bulk of the course. I’m feeling pretty good - actually, I’m feeling better than I thought I would be. No pain, no soreness, just good running. The weather was foggy, so there was plenty of moisture in the air, and the hills hadn’t been too bad.

Mile 4: 8:46

These hills were steeper. Even though I was making a real effort to maintain good form, my ankle was beginning to get sore. I couldn’t really do much about it here because a lot of the hills were just plain long: too long to do anything except a normal running form on. This included the steepest hill, by grade, just before the end - it wasn’t more than a minute or so long, but after it was over, my ankle really started to make itself known. It didn’t really hurt at any point on the course, but it was feeling pretty sore. I saw Jason at this waterstop, and its always nice to get a shout out on the course.

Mile 5: 8:48

About half a mile of gentle slopes, then a half mile of roller coaster. I had walked through the water stop at the beginning of the mile to make sure I got some Powerade, and it was pretty slow going. I wasn’t intentionally going slowly for my ankle, but I was being very careful which probably had something to do with it.

Mile 6: 8:18

After looking at the mile five split, I really wanted to pick things up a bit. I had been running with another runner for the last couple of miles, but for the life of me I cannot remember her name - sorry! We stayed together here at the faster pace, and the conversation was most welcome. Mild hills, mostly up. For some reason about 85% of this course felt like it was uphill.

Mile 7: 9:22

This was a long hill - not all that steep, but steep enough, and it bugged me quite a bit. For some reason, it didn’t get much mention on the course overview.

Mile 8: 8:29

This was pretty uneventful. I only walked a couple of steps at this water stop (they were every two miles) and moved away from my running partner. Considering the time, I can’t help but wonder if we had slowed each other down. Anyway, nothing really noteworthy here.

Mile 9: 9:38

This was the big hill. I ran some of it normally, some on my toes, and three of four times I turned around and ran backwards for 10-15 seconds or so to try to relieve the strain on my tendon. It lasted for almost half a mile, and - while it wasn’t as steep as some of the ones we’ve raced recently - it was pretty damn significant. I’m not as disappointed in my time here all things considered. My ankle was definately a limiting factor.

Mile 10: 8:40

This was to be the last mile that we ran completely on the roads. Decker Lake Rd was a little rough, but not really all that bad. There were some hills, but after the monster we barely felt them. I was pretty tired though, and keeping my form correct was taking a lot more concentration than it normally would. The ankle was feeling more sore but, again, not really hurting. Unlike mile ten at Motive, I was really just ready for this to be over.

Mile 11: 8:32 - Mile 12: 8:45

At this point we were running on the grounds of the Travis County Expo Center. There were still some good hills, no rest for the wicked. Part of me wanted to kick things up, but I just didn’t feel like I had it in me.

Mile 12.4: 3:48 (8:53 pace)

The last half mile was depressing. I was getting passed by small groups of people, and had no strength to run them down like I wanted. I just kept my head up and ran to the finish. I did make an effort to raise my arms for a good finish line picture, not worry about stopping my watch as I crossed, but I don’t know how happy I looked.

Overall: 1:47:47.6 (8:42 pace)

So. Not a bad performance, per se, but not what I wanted. I don’t think that I went out significantly too fast, and I can’t help but wonder if my relative lack of running over the last two weeks has been a factor. Still, getting back to 100% health has to be my number one priority. Before this race, I was holding down 171st place out of 473 in the Distance Challenge. Afterwards? We’ll see. After it was over I did another one and a half miles really slowly as a cooldown, probably another 12:00 pace, and a bunch of stretching.

The race Expo was fun, by the way, and the technical race shirt worth at least as much as the relatively low entry fee. After it was all over, I was just picking up my jacket when a couple from Houston, Sara and someone whose name I failed to get, stopped me and asked if I was the guy who wrote on the internet - turns out they’d recognized me from this site. That was pretty cool. I saw a lot of other folk there as well, one of the more social events of the season. You can read other race reports from Alex and Jenandmats, and Meghan will probably have one up soon. I was happy to finally meet Jennifer, and unfortunatelly missed Meghan - still, there’ll be other races.

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