Will post more later, but wanted to get the following blowing through the ether:
1. The Running Chicks, Dianna and April-Anne, are both as gracious, witty, intelligent, and lovely in real life as they are in cyberspace.
2. Dianna is, in fact, famous. But I’ll let her tell that story.
3. It was cloudy and cold before the race started. When we found April-Anne, the sun broke through, and the skies cleared up throughout the entire race. When it was time to go, it got cloudy again. Freaky.
4. I (pretty much) met both of my goals for the race. On section by the tracks between loops, where there was two way traffic, I only got passed by one guy, the eventual race winner, before I started the second loop. AND, I finished in under an hour, which completely rocked.
5. Thanks to being a Gen X’r and growing up in a world where nothing is spoken without a twinge of sarcasm, when TRCWTOH said “Hey, Speed Demon” at the beginning of the race, I thought I was going too slow through traffic. SO, I saw an opening, zipped through, and after about 30 seconds looked back to make sure TRC’s were following. They weren’t, and I suddenly felt rude.
6. I ran the rest of the race in fear that I’d bonk, or slow up, and get passed by them, and get laughed at for being a jerk.
7. (That wouldn’t have happened. See comment 1)
8. No one noticed my post-race hiccups.
9. Clam Chowder is not a good pre-race lunch.
10. Jeff – be advised, there was a spectacular sunset waiting at the end of the race.
OK, so that’s a lot closer to being a full race report than I’d anticipated. Wow. In any case, this was probably the best “race” I’ve done. Granted, I don’t race a lot, but it was nice to achieve goals.
I’m majorly sore, though – I think that I might have overtrained in the last week, with a tough ride Sunday, epic run Monday, pretty decent run Wednesday, and an all-out effort tonight. There might be something to the taper thing. Maybe I’ll try it next time. Not helping was the roll my left ankle took on quite literally the very last bit of granite in the rocky section. The ankle twinged, and my knee started aching, and I very nearly considered abandoning. But, I slowed up for about a half mile or so; things felt better, so I trundled on. I’m gonna hate life in the morning.
The race had the best start ever. We were all milling about the starting line, and the race director got up to give the usual pre-race speech – you know, be safe, etc, and so on. Then, about the time he should have said “OK, now let’s line up to start”, he said “On your mark, get set, go!”, and 95% of us said “Wha? For real?” and started running. Good times, and kind of funny.
In any case, it was great seeing others from the RBF in real-life. Now I’m off to hit the Advil.