Half At The Hampton's, friends, PR's, puddles and more.

This winter has been so lousy in the weather department that one might think we would have been either frozen or snowed out of all our winter races.
This has not been the case. Which is straight up amazing.
We now have a 100% success rate for the winter season, all 3 races going off without a hitch, with reasonable (or better than average) weather. (and now the winter season is over so I am not jinxing us!)
We did get a bit of a scare on Saturday evening when Jaimie posted a horrible ominous picture of Facebook. What in the ever loving hell is this? It was a "puddle" at mile 1, that's what.

Ohhhhhh shit. I better learn to SWIM!!

This created an amusing conversation on our household about lugging along extra shoes and having a legit transition area to change up in since this clearly was a duathlon or steeplechase event. Yikes.
Despite this concern we awoke (early) on Sunday ready to go, and happy to see that we would be seeing temps climb well into the 40's. Which is a damned heat wave according to THIS winter. And it meant that if nothing else, our socks and shoes would not freeze after running thru the *puddle*.

The dead sexy couple at the ass crack of dawn.

 We arrived nice and early (I'm a changed woman, I swear) to find all our friends for our amazing anniversary! We all met a year ago at the decidedly soggy Hyannis and have been BFF's ever since. Seriously, we are all meant to be together because we are fairly crazy. I love these kids!

So here we have Andy, Isaac, Jaimie, Mike, Crystal, Raquel and my Exclusive Dating Partner sexy Future Husband

I was feeling relaxed and ready to see what the day brought. We all made our way to the start with some amusing conversation and lined up, as people tend to do at races. Meaning, that for 10 or so minutes all I can see is a sea of elbows or, if I'm lucky, shoulders. It is the short girls burden.

At the start I felt that my goal time could be impacted by the puddle/lake an by the rather icy road conditions. Once we started I also discovered that (once again) the course was different! (than last time I ran it, not- I'm sure, from the map. which par for the course I had not so much as glanced at.) This is my third time running this particular race on a different route. I rather like this as change is good but I wasn't particularly fond of the first couple miles.
The good news in all this is that the lake/puddle had greatly diminished into a fairly minor icy slushy mess. A huge relief!

My first couple miles went by faster than the Mid Winter Classic which was to be expected because I was racing this course rather than meandering along for a training run. My pace for the first two miles showed me to be right on par for my 1:38-1:40 finish time. Not bad because I was slipping, sliding and spinning my tires like crazy. I saw a couple people go down HARD and I really didn't want to follow in their footsteps (or butt prints, ouch.)

Just after mile 2 the ice diminished and my pace picked up, looking a little something like this:
Mile 3: 7:18 "huh. that's a bit faster than I had planned..."
Mile 4: 7:16 "shit. that should not have been that fast."
mile 5: 7:12 "Oh F**K!!!! Now I need to keep this shit up. UGH. Damnit."

Once I came to the conclusion that I was going to continue running hard, I did.
And it was hard.
My slowest mile for the rest of the race was a 7:25 and that was up this sucky section of hills that people never mention when talking about pancake flat Hampton.. (I actually kid, if I had been running more outside this winter these hills would be nbd, but to hit them at a stupid fast pace on treadmill legs went exactly as I predicted. A little tough.)

It's a good thing we had some kickass cheerleaders. Thanks Andy and kids for being awesome.

More cowbell. 

 Overall, despite the fact that I find running an average pace of 7:22 to be challenging the race was fine. I did not have any dramatic problems during the race with either my legs or stomach. While I still don't think that my lazy left leg is as strong as my amazing badass right leg it is much better than it was 6 months ago! I met a very nice friend at mile 8 (a Team Hoyt member) and we basically ran shoulder to shoulder for several miles. I thanked him for being my personal pacer!

With just over 2 miles to go we began to run by the ocean again and the wind punched me right in the face, I fell down and quit running forever.
Well.... Not exactly. There was a bitch of a headwind though which made me think longingly of the October Hampton race and the brilliant, PR inducing tailwind. At this point I lost my pacing friend and was left with my own troubled thoughts. As we all know, my own troubled thoughts don't bother me in the least and part of every race is me getting pissed off. So on I trudged.In a pissed off way.

(insert editors note: luckily for all, there are no race photos to be found, yet. I feel that every photo of me from this race will be less than flattering as in the last couple miles it felt (oddly) like my head was falling off and my mouth was wiiiiiiide open. you all know I will share when  find these gems...) 

With half a mile to go and not much gas left in the tank Isaac leaped out on the course with me, like a super caffeine charged, bouncy, pumped up race pacer on crack. "COME ON!!!" He shouted, in glee, while easily jogging along at a sub 7 pace "Let's finish!!!!" At this point, I ever so slightly wanted to kill him but also did not want to be shamed by blatantly not keeping up, so I did my damn best to run faster. He asked my how my race was, like any nice person would do. "UGHHHHH" I replied, because really, who can race recap at mile 12.6? Trying to be civil I asked how he had done. "ONE TWENTY FIIIIIIIIIIIVEEEEEEEEE! he sang in glee, while kicking up his heels, springing cartwheels and back handsprings and sweating sparkles and rainbows. Clearly the only correct response to this would be to groan loudly and say "ughhhhh you sluuuuuut....!" right? Right. Hopefully so because that is what happened.

So when I managed to muscle out a 3 second PR I credited it fully to Isaac, the slut, and his sub 7 pace and amazing enthusiasm.  Thanks buddy :-)
I high fived my Team Hoyt friend, told him I was going to puke and ran off. (I did not puke. this time) 

Yes, the moral of the story is that I did snag a PR with a 1:36:37. It was a challenging run but I am no worse for it which makes me happy. I think that for a runner of my caliber keeping up that pace for a prolonged period of time should feel challenging so I'm ok with being a little tuckered out today.
I was 6th in my AG and the 25th overall woman. Also, this is a solid course PR for me by 12 or so minutes.

Trying to drink beer. Trying not to poop my pants. I'm hot.

I felt a little junky post race! Not 100% terrible but there was some minor GI disturbance that I could have done without but merits blog mention because that is what blogs are for. Poop talk. fun! I missed Eric's (huge PR) finish because I was in the bathroom... I missed the famous "race jump" pic with the blog friend because I might have been in there again, yuck.  I recovered quickly but not quickly enough to enjoy the remarkable spread of food and beer that this race always provided. This is a great race... I love the nice warm hotel ballroom, the ample bathrooms for me to have GI issues in, the dudes scraping the ice off the roads, the easy bib pick up and (usually) the beer. But not so much on this day. Boo.

So! A decent race, a goal accomplished an now onward to Boston!
With 8 weeks an counting I'm ready to get down to business.