Wednesday, March 19, 2008

March Maddness/Hill Striders

I received an email from my from Kelly about the March Madness half marathon.
She is wondering if I would be training on the Cary course. I informed her I have not started training at all.
I figure I have 4 weeks to go. I tell Kelly its a great idea and off we go. We meet up with Chris and Laura after the training run for brunch. I only ran 1.5 hours since my longest run had only been 1 hour on the treadmill. We ran at a 9min pace which felt good. Next week Kelly had a 5k race but I was motivated to run the course again. I dragged my bro to Cary( a newbie runner).
I ran for 2 hours at a little faster pace 8:50's. The following week I dragged my brother out again for a less distance and time(taper time). I did not have time to hang with Chris and the gang for brunch but I heard it was a good time with Scott and family.

Derrick picked me up at 6:00am. I convinced my bro to be a ghost runner for half the course. Of course he used his own water and only ran about 10 miles. I bumped into a lot of people. Kelly, Steve, Chris, David, Kevin, Jim, Laura and her sister. We warmed up for about 10 min and then stretched. I looked for Kelly since she offered to pace me. I wanted to beat my time from last year. This time I had a plan and a great pacer(Kelly). I find her at the 9min sign and we get in the crowd. We start out at about 8:40 and through out the 1st half of the course we push sorta fast and hard with 8:30 and sometime 8:00 pace. After all we were going downhill most of the time. Then we catch up a rabbit (Derrick). I tell Kelly I want to stay behind him and pass him at the last mile. However after going downhill at mile 9 I was running to fast going downhill that I chatted with Derrick for a few seconds.
Then Kelly and I took off. Derricks pace was a little slower than we had planned. Then mile 10 the big ass hill was upon us. I think I was running out of gas. I did not see my rabbit till we were almost on top of the hill and he passed me. I was in front of him for at least 5 min. He said I motivated him to go fast since MJ was not around. Of course he was only kidding. The next water stop I had to stop and catch my breath. Kelly normally stops at the water stops anyway. I took a couple of extra seconds to recoup. We started running and about mile 12 my right lower calf was tightening.
I also noticed that I had been redlinning for about 30 min. I brought my fuel belt and took several endurolytes. I beleive the pills were making me want to vomit but luckily I did not. I think my muscles were not getting enough oxygen. Don't really know but I had to walk it off for a min. Then Kelly kept calculating the finish time. Kelly always offered words of encouragement. I did not have any energy to talk but kept running and into the finish line we went. I could hear some our friends cheering go Griz. I beat my last years time by 2 min.

I called my bro and Derrick was ready to go home. I said good bye to all and off we went.
I thanked Kelly and told her that I probably would have slowed down a couple of times of she was not pacing me. I guess this was her way of paying me back for going shopping with her during the winter for a new bike. I told her I felt bad because she probably could have ran faster and finished with a better time. She said next year she will sign up and have a fast race.