15k Bread and Honey Race Report

As of writing, I am invisible in the table of finishers - it appears that my bib chip didn't register.  I emailed the RD and the event timing people.

Race Report:

Preparing for the race started on Saturday evening.  

We went to Joe's 40th birthday party at the Bedford Academy in the Annex, and I had a double gin and tonic and got my wife a wine spritzer.  Three hours and a lot of stories and laughter later, I had consumed another 4 double gin and tonics.  We took the subway home to Kipling and my wife drove rest of the way home.

Knowing how much alcohol dehydrates I decided to drink some water when I got home. But alcohol also makes you forget so I forgot.  Luckily after we went to sleep, a blocked number called us at 4:09 am and woke us up.  I went downstairs to have a glass of water.  My head was spinning and aching and I laid in bed until about 5:30 when I fell asleep.  The alarm rang at 6.

"Six?  why so early" you say, since the race was about 15 mins. away by car.  Ahhh, we were driving Matthew to work in Milton! So we piled in the car and I hammered my foot to the floor in a way that the angry patriarch knows how, and we dropped everyone off and started to drive to the race.  My sister, texted, called, and sms'd asking about where the race was, and then told us she wouldn't make it.

Got changed, threw my music on, then removed it, threw my water bottles on, then removed them.  Sipped a little bit of Gatorade and lined up for the start. My wife was getting the troops ready for the 1k fun walk/run so I buzzed off to zone and get psyched up (but mostly to pee).   I hung back at the end of the joint 5k/15k start - no sense in taking other people's spotlight.

This was a LSD for me on the training schedule.  So I was running base for more than half of it and trying to speed up each K after the halfway point.  It didn't really work out that way.  It was very hilly.

I managed a good base average until about mile 4, and then trying to speed up was increasingly difficult.  If you look at my HR you can see that after about the halfway point my HR stabilized but nothing much happened.  My goal was to keep calm and try to boot it down hills when they came.

At about the 3 mile mark, I was feeling pretty smug.  I usually feel crappy after those kinds of birthday parties.  And here I was running a third of a marathon!  I could only think "Wow I am awesome".  And then it happened.  Somebody started performing an autopsy in my intestines on the sushi I ate last night.  Then whatever was in there started to adjust it's location.  Then rolling thunder and the approach of child birth! huh? People with loud music blaring in their headsets turned to see if an Alien child was about to be born.    I spent miles 4 and 5 chanting, "never trust a fart, never trust a fart".  My only fear was to relieve myself in a crosswind to have some hot acid liquid start dripping down my leg.

It all calmed down as the day started to heat up.  It was 30 C in the shade (86 F).  As I started to warm up, I felt like the prison system, which was my intestines, went into lockdown mode.  And the previously liquefying milieu of party food seemed to disappear from attention and now I was fighting dehydration.  The last two water stops were three fisted drinking - one Gatorade and two waters.

Finally, the last turn and the finish.  I even managed a bit of a quickened pace and a sprint at the end.

My wife, was at the finish line cheering me on, and she just managed to make it over from the 1K finish-line behind the school we stared from.  My gang was getting a little bored at the race, so as soon as we arrived, I was made aware of the sour-pusses and their need for some excitement.  Funning thing is I hear my wife's voice yelling "Baby!", and then someone else yelling "Andrew" ... and they're standing right beside each other. It was my wonderful supportive wife, and Barb from Still Running (and Phil).  We have these pictures somewhere, but of course I don't have the camera in front of me to upload them.

And my bling, a nice technical shirt, a medal, and the bib (with chip) that will go down in infamy!

So, as I write this morning, the race director replied that they will forward my Garmin stats to the timing company.  I don't know if they can just put that info in without verification - but it was kind of the RD to suggest this.  

Look back on all of it.  I should have had another double at the party.