Battling the stiff 25 mph hour wind (with gusts that topped 30) was a battle you simply couldn’t win on this day. But many tried on a new course (shifting from Buda to Round Rock) with a new distance from 30K to 20 miles. The race — the fifth in the Austin Distance Challenge Series — started and finished at the spacious Dell Diamond, but it seemed no matter where you were on the course, the wind was in your face. Even the cross wind proved difficult.

How difficult? If you tossed a cup of water in the direction of your mouth at some of the aid stations, it either wound up in your nose or someone else’s face. Even some of the aid station volunteers had difficulty standing in one spot in the teeth of the wind. Liz Shelton, third in the women’s division, said, only half joking, she squeezed some gel out of a pack which ended up in her hair.

That’s how the RunTex writeup of this new 20 mile race started out. And you know what? They’re not exaggerating in the slightest. The wind was no joke, and the fact that there wasn’t anything out on the rolling course to block it for miles around certainly didn’t help.

I started the day feeling uncertain. I wanted to do well, to have a strong 20 miles under my belt going in to Freescale, but at the same time needed to take it easy for the sake of my foot and not go crazy. The fact that I’ve only had a single 20 since running NYC was certainly in my mind, but I was using it to try to decide things both ways which didn’t help. I had no real race plan despite a lot of woolgathering on the subject.

As usual the Gazelles met up an hour before the start to do some warmup, drills, and stretching. If you ever want to run into me before a race, I’ll be at the finish line with about 65 minutes to go waiting for my group, come up and say howdy! Anyway, we met up and went out for about a mile and a half. The wind made the otherwise pleasant running weather bitterly cold, even with a long sleeved shirt and pants, and it was a pleasure to be moving.

While I was trying to figure out what to do, Gilbert warned us all again not to go out too fast, not to give anything close to 100%, and to stay with our friends and take it easy. Alright already! I hooked up with Jay, Shannon, and a bunch of other folk for what we figured would be a progressive supported training run. The plan was to start out really slowly, then take about 5 miles to get up to the group’s average marathon pace (about 8:35), stay there for 10 miles or so, then gradually pick it up and run the last 3 in fast.

This was not to be.

The first half went fairly well. There was a decent hill in the first mile, but we were crawling so it was a total non-issue. The road surface was great, smooth with very little camber, and the conversation was very fun. Since this was the first time this race had been held a few problems were inevitable, although having to wait while the three (3!) people at a waterstop filled cups would have been a lot more annoying if we were going flat out. The wind was annoying, but even when we were heading right into it for the last few miles it wasn’t terrible.

The second lap was a lot harder. The wind picked up even more, to the point that the flags around the course were sticking straight out, barely flapping. At times we would actually find ourselves leaning sideways to run straight. After about mile 12-13 Jay pulled ahead about 75′ while I dealt with another slow waterstop; I didn’t catch up but I stuck with him for a while. It wasn’t until mile 15 that things started to go wrong. Well, mostly. The good news was that the 15-16 waterstop had PowerAde (the first on the course if you can believe it). The bad news was that my foot flared up in a big way.

Shannon had pulled ahead of us around mile 11, Rich at mile 12 or so, and then Jay was next. I was the fourth of our little group, and I really didn’t want to be passed, but I slowed way, way down. It was pretty damn painful. I stopped a couple of times to massage my foot, but I don’t know that it helped or not. With 4-5 miles remaining, I just gritted my teeth and slugged it out. To add insult to injury, I started to chafe severely underneath my arms (although the position does mean that I’m getting better with my rear arm motion, I just need to adjust my bodygliding accordingly).

The odd thing was that as slow as I’d become, I was still passing people. A whole ton of folk flamed out today - probably due to the wind. It was hard running into the wind, and pretty challenging just running with the side gusts. I’d already been the victim of both water and an empty cup hitting me from “friendly fire” incidents. Still, it was an odd feeling to be in the middle of such a slow group of folks. It made me feel like a back-of-the-packer, even though I still finished moderately well.

I never did get to do my fast pickup. With about 1 1/2 miles to go, I was passed by Jennifer. I ran with her for a mile or so, then she pulled about 20′ ahead of me. Still, I have a history of fast finishes and sure enough with around 400M remaining I started my pull, catching up to her and finishing about 10 seconds ahead. I saw Jay doing a cooldown walk, and he told me to, “Run strong like bull,” but I didn’t respond, just trying to finish well without breaking down. My final time was a pretty lousy 3:00:07, but at least I brought it in.

The verdict? I have an appointment with the doctor on Tuesday morning to take another look at my foot. If I had the race to do over again, I’d still run it, but I’d skip the warmup and run faster for the first 15 miles, assuming that I wouldn’t be able to do as well at the end. What does this mean for Freescale? Your guess, at this point, is as good as mine.

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