So thats what it’s like…

This is the race report for the Army Run.  I’ll give you the story or if your not up for reading go here and see the results for yourself.

I awoke at the ripe hour of 6am to prepare for my day.  At 9am was the race (1/2 marathon) and I had planned to do some hard biking before.  My cycling intervals were done out on the road about 15-20K from the race grounds.  I had planned on having about 30minutes of time to get ready (if I left at 7).

So me being me I didn’t get rolling till after 7am which meant that I was going to be tight on time.  The day was freezing, partly the reason I was late because I had to rethink my dress code. 

I rolled out to my TT road (long, no stop lights or signs and mostly flat).  Today I was also greeted by a freezing wind chill, the kind that makes your knees hurt.  Oh well, I was outside and riding my bike fast, all good!

Well I must have enjoyed it too much because I took a look at my watch and it was 8:10.  I still had 1 interval + I had to meet Amanda so I could get dressed for the race.  Oh, and a head wind all the way back into the city!  I pedaled pretty hard to get back!

I met Amanda at 8:43am.  I did a flying dismount while she packed the bike into the car while I changed.  We then had to drive downtown (yup this was going to be tight!).  After blasting through some red lights (hope her mom doesn’t read this!) I hopped out of the car about 1/2K from the start.  It was about 8:55, just enough time to have a natural break!

So I managed to squeeze near the front and boom we were off on the 1st inargual Army run!  At this point I was feeling a little hungry but thought as long  as I refuled at the aid stations I’d be fine. 

A couple guys shot off the front right away including former X-C runner Matt Stacey.  I wanted to just run as I would in a tri, conservative but always pushing.  After about 5K I had moved up to about 6-7th position.  Everything seemed to be running fine, legs felt ok and the cold didn’t seem to bug me. 

At the 9K-10K mark I was caught by a 5 person group which I joined.  This was both a blessing and a curse because I could get shelter from the wind but it was also pushing me a little harder than I felt like I could keep going.  I stuck in for a couple K but around 13 I decided to pop off and run at my own pace. 

So I was by now myself in no mans land with a slight headwind.  I had my GPS on and was keeping track of each K (everyone was marked!) so I roughly knew my speed was constant.  Until the 17th…

The whole race I had a feeling I would either just have enough calories or I could do into heavy depletion.  Stupid, I didn’t take a gel thinking they’d have them on course.  Nope.  No calories besides gatorade.

It was at about this time I saw Amanda and begged for some fuel, no dice.  I was doing this all on what I had…

I started to feel like I was going backwards.  My pace slowed from 3:40 to 4:05 and I started getting passed.  There was nothing I could do except try to limit my losses.  Man this sucked.

If this was my A race, I would have kicked my own ass but seeing as I just barely made it to the start, it was alright.

Finished 56 seconds off my PB (ouch!) in 1:20:56.  Oh well.  If I can run like this at Worlds I’ll be pumped!

Thanks for reading.  I’m going to re-fuel.

Happy (where did summer go?) Trainin!

Cliff