Ben’s Race Page

I’m sore. More sore than I have been after a race in a long time. I think it’s partly due to my training and partly due to the hilly course. My time was good for my training, but I showed 3:43 on my ipod and I really thought I had a PR. I’m not sure why my time was so far off, but looking at my splits, something must have happened between mile 10 and 13.1 because that’s where things seem to be off. That, or I didn’t see my ipod correctly at the 1/2 marathon mark. I was feeling great at the 1/2 point and was thinking of a 3:40 time, after all, the weather was perfect. It was around mile 17 where things started to go downhill and the hills started to catch up to me. By mile 20, I was pretty sore, but I kept going. At about mile 24 the 3:45 pace group caught up to me and I decided I was going to do my best to keep up with them. I did for a while until we hit a hill and I just couldn’t keep up, so I did my best to keep them in sight. I was spent by mile 26, but I kept going and seeing Carrie near the finish gave me the last little boost I needed to pick up the pace and finish strong.

Now on to the race. The first half was a great course. Good crowd support and interesting course. The second half was farther out of town and the crowd support was pretty thin. The course was pretty by the river, though and I had a little bit of a back and forth battle going with some girl running the race, so that kept me going. At the end of the river path, there was a really steep downhill that about did me in. I was fading as we headed back into town, but one of the bands was taking a break and they were playing Herbie Hancocks’ Chameleon over their sound system and that really gave me a boost. I thought I’d see Carrie at around mile 19 or 20, but I was ahead of my pace and she missed me. I only had a couple of complaints. First, they handed out red Accelerade. I don’t mind the Accelerade, but who decided red was a good idea? I didn’t get much on me, but several people had red stains all over their clothing. Second, the CMT Music Mile didn’t have as much music going on as had been promised. I’d guess that was due to the rain at the beginning of the race.

I want to say a big thanks to Tyler for driving and making plans in Tennessee. I stuck with him for the first few miles, but then he told me to go ahead and I did, even though I felt bad for ditching him. It was perfect weather, though, and I figured this was going to be my shot at a PR.

I also want to thank Carrie and Michelle for coming out to cheer us on and running around the course to find us at multiple spots. I know that can be frustrating and it is a lot of walking around and figuring out where to park, but it’s always a big help to see them on the course.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Races. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.