Hmmm….

I went to Eastern Washington to do the Grand Columbian half iron a couple of weekends ago.   My goal was to string together a solid effort in the swim/bike/run w/o any issues; wasn’t expecting a PR in anything, but was hoping to do well in all three sports, which was something that had eluded me in the other two halves this summer.  This would be the second triathlon my family would see me participate in (the other one being my first one last year); we took the opportunity to stay on a houseboat with the whole clan (“Mom, can you go cheer daddy on while Grandma & Grandpa watch us?” was what my four year old asked when he saw the houseboat with the hot tub and slide into the lake, both on the roof of the boat). 

Poor planning 101: We arrived at the houseboat around 6:30 in the evening expecting to be able to buy food at a store there.  Nope, they were closing for the winter next week, so the store literally had nothing except a bag of pasta.  It was also a solid 45 minutes away from the race start, so I hauled out to register & drop my bike off before they closed at 8 pm.  Bought some bread, peanut butter & jelly at a gas station on the way home…  So, dinner was 600 calories of pasta.  Next morning, I woke up, had two pieces of toast & a bag of Shot Blocks and was out by the course early.  15 minutes before race start, I had a GU.

Swim

The swim course was OK; I was expecting the lake to be clearer, although it may just be because it was really overcast that it was tough to see anything.  We did a triangle; the first leg, I felt awesome (which is usually the worst) and actually stayed on feet the entire time and definitely felt the drafting advantage.  I took the buoy wide (I’m still creeped out about being pushed under it) and discovered why I always end up off course.  Instead of turning 90+ degrees to the next buoy, I tend to turn 45  degrees & head to the great blue yonder.  By the time I sight again, I’m off.  I did it again off the last buoy.  Came out of the water in 40:24, which is awful for me, particularly given the calmness of the lake & the sight rope.  I didn’t worry about it because I figure 3-4 minutes over the day wouldn’t kill me.  I also felt really good during the swim with none of my usual “I should just quit” moments, even though there were a couple of fairly awkward moments when I wanted to burp pretty heavily and my head was underwater.  Unlike my wife, I never burp. :) 

T1

I got out of the water, realized I didn’t feel great, so walked up the grassy incline.  Made it to the top, bent over and hurled GU, water and a lot of air (made a less than pleasant sound) near some spectators.  I entered the bag pick-up area, realized something was coming up again, so walked out of it to avoid knarfing on someone’s bag; made it out, bent over and dry heaved a couple times near some Olympic guys waiting for their race.  Commentary ranged from “You OK?” to “Oh, that’s gotta suck” and “And they said the bike was hard.” An EMT and a race official asked if I was OK, which I was, and a volunteer took pity on me and brought me my empty bag (everything was on the bike already).  Plan was to take a GU before getting on the bike; yeah, that didn’t happen.

Bike

Got onto the bike, put my shoes on and shifted into the big ring as there was a slight decline to the first hill.  Off went the chain.  #&)*$ #*() – what’s the point of having your shoes clipped in as you ride off if you’ll need to unclip to reset your chain 1 minute in.  The bike ride was spectacularly brutal.  Immediately noticed that I was already pretty hungry.  I can’t believe they used to host an ironman out here.  My HR spiked to 178 at the top of the first climb, which has points with grades of 14%-17%.  The hills were non-stop the first 40 miles (4,000 feet of elevation gain), with only one longish downhill to recover; the last 10-15 were a screamfest downhill (where I’ve learned that I max out at 41 mph on my bike; I had plenty of time to experiment with aero positions J).  Realized that I’ll take hills any day over a flat course; it was tough but the effort changes made it fun.  I must have banged my front derailleur at some point because every time I shifted from small to large, my chain came off.  By the third time, there was serious cursing involved; 4^th-6^th time I monkeyed with it while riding and managed to get it back on w/o stopping.  It was doubly annoying because I got gun shy on the rollers were I knew there was big climb right after, so I’d stay in the little ring on the downhill to avoid dealing with it.  Oh, my big goal was to sip – not  gulp – my nutrition to avoid stomach issues, and that worked well, although I only made it through about half my bottle.  3:13, which I’m not tickled with, but I’ll gladly take given the chain & food issue.  We hit some very light rain around mile 20 for a couple minutes and I don’t remember the wind being bad at all; we were slammed with a wind storm that night.

Nothing crazy in T2; felt OK getting off the bike and was anxious to run.  I’m usually so amped to get off the bike that it’s hard for me not to feel excited to start running.

Run

The goal was to hit 7:30s on the predominantly flat course.  I went out in 7:42 and didn’t worry about it; my first mile is usually not my best one.  Realized that I wasn’t feeling so hot, though, which is a problem if it’s the first mile.  Second mile in 8:09 and I was pretty confident I was in trouble; I was hungry but didn’t want anything to do with solid foods or gels, so tried Gatorade & burped it back up, so stuck to water.  By mile three, I’d started walking and decided I’d do one lap and see if things improved.  At the turn-around, I saw the Mile 10 marker and it totally broke me when I realized I had 7 miles to go before I would even see that sign and have three miles left.  I knew my race was over and just needed to make it to the start; a walking half marathon would have accomplished nothing and a med-tent visit wasn’t a good start to the rest of the weekend with the clan.  I saw them for the first time around mile five and walked off the course.  Bummed that things didn’t go so great, but I was happy to have done the bike after T1.

If pictures tell a thousand words…. Grandpa definitely had the right idea.

A pro triathlete, who will remain nameless (but placed at Lake Stevens this weekend), essentially wrote on their blog that PEM – the guys that run Lake Stevens 70.3 – run some of the worst events in the country and that their record held firm after this race (they’ve since taken it down).  I can’t say I completely agree with that assessment of the race itself, but I will say that the clan and I had a brutal time on Saturday before the race, in part because of our ineptitude but also because of PEM’s really, really poor event management/communication skills.  Suffice it to say that we started the process for dropping my bike off at 1 pm & didn’t finish until around 5 pm (with a 45 minute drive home waiting for us).  I believe Karen’s take on it was “what a waste of a day”, which is not what I want her thinking given that this was exclusively for my benefit…

That night, as we were putting the kids to bed, I brought my daughter a glass of water.  She had seen the swim course when we went to drop off the bike and her eyes had become as wide as Frisbees when I pointed out the buoy we were swimming to.  As she handed me the glass back, she asked me if I was scared about the race (I’d confessed last year before my first one that I was and that girl has the memory of an elephant).  I said yes, that it would probably hurt at times.  She gave me a big hug and said that I should just repeat “I can do this” to myself when I got scared, that that’s what she did when she got scared.  I have no idea where she picked this up.  I repeated it to myself a fair number of times during rough patches; somehow the cheesiness of the inspirational poster is lost when it’s your five-year old whispering it.

The next day, the alarm went off at 4 am.  I had loaded the car up the night before, so all I had to do was eat something, get dress and get going.  For some reason, all I had was two pieces of toast and walked out to the car.  I didn’t want to get back into the house for more food as the dog would bark, wake up the kids and it would all be downhill from there.  I also don’t know what I would have eaten, so I opted to chew on some extra Cliff Blocks and Energy Bites on the way up.  Parking was uneventful (getting there at 4:50 am does that…), and it gave me plenty of time to get my stuff together.

It was pretty darn cold in the morning; I was wishing I’d had more than my long-sleeve running shirt on – folks had their wetsuits on an hour before the race to stay warm.  My feet got numb standing on the wet grass, so I stepped in the lake, which warmed them up.I didn’t do my usual warm-up swim since we were relegated to a crappy part of the boat dock with a ton rocks, trees, etc. in the water and I didn’t want to slice anything up.  The race ended up being delayed for 10 minutes to allow the fog to burn off the lake; you literally couldn’t see the buoys in the water.

So the big “secret” – which is all anyone talked about, including an announcement at the race briefing – was that there was a sight-line in the water.  I opted to swim a little wide of the buoys to avoid the tangle of folks trying to key right off of it; overall, I think that was smart.  There were 165 people in my wave, so hands down the most crowded race I’ve been in with people of my age group (the two other tin-men races I’ve done had that many people in the race overall; much more space to swim in those…).  As we jumped in, someone reflected that it smelled, well, like ass around us.  Hadn’t noticed it, but definitely did once he mentioned it.

Gun went off and I just started churning.  Had the usual self-doubts the first 5 minutes, but once I settled into a groove and merged with the pack, I started feeling really good.  I was pulling, staying on people’s feet and generally passing folks.  Most importantly, there was a fair amount of contact and it didn’t frazzle me in the least; I even had my goggles kicked off (yay for strap under the cap!) and just cleared them, put them back on and kept going.  After the second buoy, I turned left and headed for the next one.  Unfortunately, I ended up on the wrong side of it (I ended up accidentally cutting it short by going on the inside), so even though no one told me to, I turned around, swam around it on the outside, put my head down and churned again.  I tried to sight but was blinded from the sun, so just kept going.  Note to self, invest in darkened goggles; by the time I looked up again, I had veered way off course and was out on my own.  Not in a “I’m swimming a weird Z pattern” kinda way, more a “how the hell did I end up out here” kinda way.  I course corrected 90 degrees and just pushed to shore.  If you’re too stupid to sight correctly, you deserve losing time.  Final time, 38:23.  BTW, the smell was AWFUL about 100 yards from shore for the last bit in, which was no fun as that’s when I’m really gasping for air.

Transition was uneventful, although I was surprised at the number of people that chose to put their bike shoes on before running out.

I’d been told the bike course was “challenging”, but, despite not having seen it before, I didn’t want to be tentative on it.  I spent a ton of time in the big ring on the rollers and did the best I could to keep it honest.  It took 4 miles for my HR to drop below 170, I ended up averaging around 152, which was 10 beats higher than a TT ride I did the week prior.  I went through the first lap averaging 19.4 mph but slowed the second lap to 18.8 mph.  I faded pretty hard the last 5-6 miles; I was still averaging 19.0 mph at mile 50, but opted not to crank when I started fading thinking it might be worth backing off for the run.

A couple stories on the bike:

1) At the base of the first major downhill, there’s a blind turn. Came around the corner only to see the back end of an ambulance – with lights on – sticking out into the road.  Two cyclists were on the ground being tended to; no idea what happened to them.  Swerving around the ambulance at 43mph was no fun; let’s just say your cheeks are clinging pretty tight to the seat at that point… you’d think they would have left the siren on or had a race official up the road slowing people down.

2) As we climbed out of another hill, a raving lunatic dog came snarling & barking out of a house and charged the cyclist in front of me.  The guy swerved pretty hard, which startled the dog, and it stopped dead in its tracks.  Right in front of me.  I screamed “MOVE” at it, and it luckily spoke English and moved.  That would’ve hurt.  I apologized to the other cyclist as I went by him, making sure he knew I was talking to the dog and not him.  :)

3) Once again, kinda felt icky as I rode out of transition.  My stomach wasn’t feeling right, yet again, but this time I had a plan.  First of all, I was going to eat regardless of what happened.  If it came back up, so be it.  Secondly, if passing gas helped (my wife loves this blog), propriety be damned.  OMG.  You might as well have called me the Hindenburg.  If I could have, I would have worn a jersey that said “FLAMABLE” in big red letters.  At first, I tried to restrain myself to when there was a truck passing.  Yeah, there weren’t enough trucks on the road. I have no idea what caused it, but wanted to get everything out of my system before the run to avoid a repeat of my Chelanman run.  Let’s just say that there was nothing carbon-neutral about this race for me.  OK, enough with the sandbox jokes…

4) The course got a lot hairier on the second lap.  I was in the earlier waves, so the second lap we were lapping the slower folks from the later waves.  Problem was that there were cars on the road who didn’t want to pass, as it required crossing the yellow line… so, you’d catch up to a car and could either pass on the right, cut it off and pass the cyclist in front of you, or you waited.  I did and saw people do both and it definitely wasn’t safe to do the first.

Final bike time: 2:59. 

T2 was ridiculously slow, only because GI issues necessitated what has become the practically ritualistic visit to the porta potty.  It’s really, really annoying.

The run course was my favorite to date; I tend to do better on hilly courses and this one provided.  Basically, two figure eights, with a long false flat on the first and a big climb on the second (that you had to run down on the other side then do a U-turn and run back up and down).  My calves were absurdly tight the first three miles, but it was in a long run after a long training week kinda way, so I knew that would be fine.  I churned through the first ten miles @ 7:25 pace with the requisite stops at what I’m now going start calling P2 at mile 2 & 8 (the Garmin auto-stops at the P2 so don’t know what it did to my pacing).  They were faster stops than in T2, but really annoying nonetheless (and there’s the fading on the run part as you realize another stop will be required…).  Between mile 11-13, I was pretty fried and faded to 8:15s-8:30s.  The only thing that kept me going at one point was that I kept promising myself I could take a nap under a tree before getting in the car for the ride home instead of my usual race home.  Final half-marathon time 1:44.  Final time, 5:29.47.

The run course was great; as I headed out, heard the announcer & the crowd cheer Gambles on to a course record win as he came through.  I saw Chris Tremonte on my first lap (he was obviously finishing) and tried to say “GO CHRIS” but I think “Holy #$@&% this hurts” is all I was able to mumble to myself.  Lame.  I saw a fair number of female pros and got a thank you from one for slowing down before we entered an aid station so that she didn’t have to deal with me as she passed me through it. 

Overall, it was my best executed tinman to date despite continuing to try and figure out what is causing my nutritional issues.  I’m not doing anything different than in training and have only had it happen once during training, so can’t seem to replicate it.  I guess I’ll just keep experimenting; unfortunately, everyone and their dog seems to have an opinion on it on the web and they’re all different.  There’s easily places to optimize, especially where P2 is involved, and I know what I need to work on in each sport to get some simple improvements.

So it’s taken me a while to get around to writing this report; I ended up writing one and sharing it with an alias at work, but for some reason never posted it here & am opted to re-write the report. I figure I need to post something before Lake Stevens on Sunday.

I signed up for Chelanman early in the year for a couple of reasons: 1) it was close to home, 2) it was in July and far enough away from Lake Stevens to give me time to recover and 3) just seemed like a well organized race, especially if the clan opted to come (Karen could run a road race or the Sprint, and there was a kids tri as well). Ultimately, I ended up going with a buddy and the clan stayed at home; we’d done a ton of traveling and races frankly aren’t that fun for the parent that’s got a 3 year old and a 5 year old to keep occupied for 6+ hours. Oh, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a ton of fun leading up to the race.

Chris and I left work early on Friday and gunned it for Chelan; he was planning on running the half marathon. We stopped about halfway to buy a phone charger and it was the first time we’d gotten out of the comfy air conditioned car. Holy #$@*()&, I remember saying to him, it’s really #$@(*& hot out here. I should note that it was my first trip to Eastern Washington. Ever. It was, er, hot. Damn hot.

We got there a little later than expected and when I checked us in to the Best Western, we had to sort out confusion about our room (they had us in a shared queen bed, and eventually bumped us to a really nice multi-room suite). I had planned to get in a quick 15 minute run, but we were both ravenous and I had to check in my bike, so instead of running, I checked my bike in and we went to Mystic Pizza and shared some sort of cheese pizza. Bad move. Cheese and me are not a happy, as I would later discover.

We got back to the room, I got all my stuff out of the car and went out to walk the transition area. I wanted to see the swim start, swim exit, etc. to try and get some landmarks for the race. Overall, the transition area was well organized; there were individual slots for the bikes, which eliminated all the issues I’ve had in the past with people moving my stuff. I got there late with my bike, though, so it was slim pickings; this was a problem because T1 was on the slope of a hill. I basically had a choice – position my bike close to the bike-out (thereby mitigating the amount of time running around with bike in hand in transition) but on a hillside (which would make transitions, like getting out of a wetsuit, a little tricky) or near the swim exit (but making me run through all of transition with my bike to the bike-out) but on a flat part. I opted for far & flat; while I think I lost a few seconds that way, transitions on a hillside would have sucked – I will note, however, that the bike rows were very close together giving little room to maneuver and that was a little annoying when in transition.

I went to bed relatively early (for me) and had a uneventful night. Woke up early, grabbed my bottles & checked out the bike again. The benefit of being at the Best Western was that I had easy access to all my stuff and, more importantly, my own bathroom, which I definitely made use of as we waited for the start. I went for a quick warm-up run, then got my wetsuit on and swam the last 200-300 yards of the swim course; I was pretty surprised at how shallow the water was – if you forgot to bend your elbow, you’d easily scrape bottom on that section as it followed the shoreline.

There were 134 participants in the race and it was a one wave swim start. It definitely didn’t feel that crowded; I placed myself a little more in the thick of things at the beginning, which went fine. Overall, the swim was made infinitely easier by having a rope to key off of, instead of having to spot buoys. I stayed in the draft zone of other swimmers for little chunks of time, which was new and interesting. We were definitely going against the current on the way out, and because of the shape of the course, I didn’t feel like we had the full effect of the current coming back (it hit us more at an angle). Around 28, 29 minutes into it, I started not feeling so hot, which is par for the course in the swim; I think I just forget how long it takes me to do 1.2 miles and it pisses me off around that time. I came out of the water in 36:56, or around 1:56 pace, which, in hindsight, I’m a little disappointed by, if only because I know I can go faster. I came out in 63^rd place overall and 7^th in my division of 15 folk (35-40). Chris, who’s race hadn’t started yet, saw me exit (and took the picture below) and said I looked pretty whooped coming out of the water.

On a side note, we ended up coming up with some nicknames on the trip. Chris ended up becoming “High Maintenance” chris just due to the fact that he always seemed to be calling the reception about something (slow internet speed, an alarm and god knows what else). As I came out of the water, he called Karen to tell her the swim portion was done. She wasn’t expecting it and immediately asked him “Is he dead? Did he have a heart attack?” Of course, she immediately became known as “Worst Case” Karen. Chris then called Tracey, his wife, to say hey. “Did you finish already,” she asked? It was 7:45 am and his race hadn’t even started yet. Needless to say, she became “Best Case” tracey. Not sure what they decided for me… I should also note that Chris wasn’t sure the point-and-shoot camera that he borrowed from me was working, so he tested it on himself. It was, by the way, working – this is the shot he took of himself:

I struggled a bit with getting my wetsuit off (and was glad to be on flat ground) and eventually managed to drag Shrek out of the rack and onto the course. Note the wheels, which my coach very generously lent me for the race…

Unfortunately, by getting to Chelan late the night before, I hadn’t had a chance to drive the course. I assumed that since it followed the Lake for the first 30 or so miles that that part would be flat. I was wrong; while it was far from hilly, there were definitely rollers. In general, I think it went pretty well, although I probably didn’t push as much as I should have on some parts of that course. It did follow the half-marathon course, which was nice as it allowed me to see that part as well as wave to Chris on my way back into town as he ran his race.

One thing that was a little weird was that the Olympic race – which was some sort of qualifying race and attracted some ludicrously fast folk – was taking place five minutes after our swim start; invariably, some guys came screaming by us on their bikes, which was fine, except at their turn around (around 12 miles out) where I saw at least two very close calls as they slammed on their brakes in front of a half-iron racer to do a U-turn (we were just going straight).

Around mile 30, we turned off into two monster hills. I’d been training on hills for a while, so wasn’t too worried about it. I didn’t really get passed by anyone on the uphills, but would lose folk on the downhills (still not sure why). The second set was brutally long; driving the course definitely would have helped there. It also would have showed me where there was a 400 ft part of the road that had been torn up and replaced with gravel and sand; that was a little precarious to ride through (in fact , I passed four people walking their bikes across). The back part of the hill was a little hairy, with some S-turns, particularly since there was traffic on the road, but I eventually made it back to transition in 3:09 (55^th overall, 8^th in my division).

Last learning from the bike – buy a behind the seat water carrier. My problem was that I had my nutrition in one bottle and my water in my speedfill. I ran out of water before my nutrition but didn’t want to stop at a water area to refill my speedfill. I couldn’t take a bottle and empty it in my speedfill as I had nowhere to put it afterwards. Hence, the rear-seat bottle carrier; at Lake Stevens, I plan to be able to grab a water bottle on the ride, dump it in my speedfill and then stick the empty one in the seat carrier. During the race, I ran dry from around mile 40 to mile 50, which kinda sucked in the heat & hills, but managed to get another water bottle (and pound it) during the last six miles before the run.  Oh, and it wasn’t enjoyable to ride through the mist of the farmer in protective gear spraying his orchard with pesticides, particularly when I didn’t have any water left to rinse the nasty taste from my mouth…

I got off the bike and ran to my spot; got my gear on (including some spray suntan lotion given that it was approaching 90 degress at this point) and meandered out of transition. Meandered is the word because my intestines weren’t feeling great. There were porta-potties outside of transition, but I couldn’t see if they had people so I sorta jogged out, figuring I’d get to the first one on the course. It definitely slowed my transition down significantly; my T1 time was 46^th overall despite my wetsuit challenges, in contrast I came out of T2 81^st even though I came in without shoes on and ready to roll.

I was churning in the mid-7s pace until the first station, where the porta-potty was; took my time in there and hit the course again. There were water stations around every mile and a half; if I have a beef with the course, it’s just that the mile markers were off on the run and I’d opted not to race with my Garmin, so it was a little tough to guage where I was in the course. The first half went really well; I drank water at the aid stops, got hosed down, stuffed a wet sponge in my hat and churned on; frankly, I was surprised at how good I felt. I turned around started coming back; basically, I was holding my own pace and passing people as they opted to stop. At mile 7 or so, I came to a screeching halt as my intestines flared again. Found a porta potty and started running again. Mile ten , the issue flared again and this time it wouldn’t go away. I’d start to run and it would flare pretty quickly. Basically, I was relegated to a walk/run for the last 3 miles, which really sucked; surprisingly, only one person passed me during that time; the course was a wreckage of folks apparently struggling with the heat. I eventualy crawled home in 1:55, which really sucked. I ran 35^th overall and 5^th in my division, finishing the entire race in 5:46 – 37^th overall and 5^th in my age group.

Overall, I had fun at the race – it was a great event, well organized, tough and generally would recommend it to anyone, but I was bummed by the final time. I basically finised in the same time (a little faster) than in Montreal back in September, although the course – swim, bike & run – was significantly harder than the pancake-flat Montreal course. Key things I learned from this race going in to Lake Stevens this weekend:

- Push harder on the swim. I’m confident I can swim faster and just need to put my head down and do it. I think I slowed the second half, in part as I got closer and knew it would end soon.

- Push harder on the bike. I also think I was a little lackadaisical on the bike as I didn’t want to blow up on the hills. Like the swim, I think part of that was a confidence issue, although part of that was also not having my Garmin and going purely on feel; I just don’t think I have a good sense of feel on the bike yet. I’m bringing the Garmin to Lake Stevens.

- Figure out nutrition on the run. No idea what happened on the run, but my legs felt great; it was my stomach that did me in. I don’t think it was what I did on the course, as I’d trained with the carbo pro before. It may have been the cheese pizza the night before. It’s Thursday, and I’ve pretty much vowed to eat the most bland diet on the planet leading up to Sunday. I’m also going to start the bike with some solids (e.g., Cliff Blocks); I’ve trained with them in the past and they worked well, so I’m using those in the early bike miles. Oh, I’m also bringing a gel flask with me on the run; opening and dealing with gel packs sucks.

- Bring the Garmin. I think it would have been helpful on a) pacing on the bike and b) just knowing where I was on the course; the mile markers weren’t great out here and I think I probably held a little too much back on the bike because of it.

I’m not throwing out a time estimate for Lake Stevens, but short of something blowing up on me, I’m pretty confident that I can beat my Chelan time.

Not sure why I’m writing about this one, but trying to be a little consistent about writing about races…

Basically, State College has an Arts Festival every summer that is really well done and as part of that festival, they have a 10km, 5km and Kids Run.  I had a medium run scheduled for that day in my taper to Chelan, so I opted to do the race.  I ran it in 2002 – it was a different course back then – and finished in a dreadful 47:21.  My goal for this race was to dip under 40 min, but it was more squishy than anything; I planned to run hard and just see what happened.  Then I saw the course profile.  It wasn’t pretty.  40 min became a nice-to-have… let’s just say that this course was definitely going to wake me up in the morning.

I got to the race with plenty of time to spare, got registered with a buddy who was also doing it and lined up near the front.  The gun went off and it was a mad dash down a hill for the first half mile, which passed in 6:05 pace.  To think I was actually – seriously – holding back.  It was a fairly large group of people in a straight line.  We turned the corner and hit the first moderate uphill and BOOM – immediate separation in the field.  Next thing I know we were all ragged for the next downhill and the first mile passed in around 6:12. 

The rest of the race was really quite boring from a blog perspective.  I put one foot in front of the other.  It was a hard run with fairly little movement in placement – I got passed a little in the second mile and passed a little in later miles.  They had warned us about a hill at mile four, which actually happened at mile 3.5 and seemed much more gradual than the chart would show.  I tried to pick it up in the final mile, but pretty much just held pace.  I finished in 41:07, or 6:37 pace, and 20th overall out of 280 finishers (5th in my AG, which bummed me out – they had a cool award for top 3, but I wasn’t even close needing to beat a 39:18 for 3rd place). 

The best part of the day, however, was Kamil & Teja showing up for the kids run.  There was a 5 & 6 year old category that we threw Kamil into w/ Teja and they both had a blast doing it.  It was one lap around the outfield of a baseball stadium, and all the kids got a medal & a cookie for finishing.  Teja rocked out the minute they said go & finished 17th out of the 47 kids.  I ran next to Kamil, who hauled the entire time.  At the halfway point, he looked up at me and said “I’m tired”, to which I told him we could walk, but he opted to keep hauling, finishing 38th.  We got some pictures of them that I’ll post up here soon….