10 mile race.
A little late out the door.
Drive for two hours.
Find a parking spot.
Butt numb from sitting.
walk/jog to packet pick up.
Port-a-potty, wrap feet, shoes, ice.
Trouble with hat, mp3, ice, and then the gun goes off.
Finish mending equipment, chipped race so not losing time until i cross the mat.
Away I go, but now I am behind a couple of hundred joggers.
Lose about 90 seconds the first two miles dodging slower runners.
Take off long sleeve shirt and tie around waste,
straighten out mp3 wires, kept running but lost 20 seconds.
Ran out of ice, hit the hills, started to slow down.
Maintained fairly well and kicked home.
According to the stats my chip start was 1:45 behind the gun
and I started in 184th place and finished in 22nd, so I passed 162 runners.
4th in age group (which they awarded on chip time), 3rd place was 3 minutes ahead of me,
if I had been more coordinated I might have been close to catching him.
But I would have never known he was my age, he had a full head of dark hair and looked about 35.
And the only reason I was so high up the list was because this race has a 20 mile division
which all the good runners were using as a marathon training run.
I kicked fairly hard at the end to get ahead of 3 runners, after crossing the finishing line
I turned to give them a handshake, and they were all in the other chute heading out on their second loop.
My best 10 mile race pace was their long run jog pace.
Anyway, missed a season best by 25 seconds, but on a challenging course in the heat with technical difficulties I am satisfied.
I am probably in good enough shape to run a half at my BQ-5 pace,
except Boston might drop the qualifying times again.
Supposedly the cut off will be 5 minutes faster than posted and they may drop the times next year.
I was already targeting -5 minutes, but may need to go -7 minutes.
