Notes
That wasn't really what I was expecting... Felt good, but I'm pretty stiff this morning.
Thoughts and Notes from this race:
Coming into the race, I was aiming for a nice casual sub-2, but running very easy was the watchword. Then we got an email the night before saying that it was predicted to be 60 with 98% humidity, so I definitely was planning to sandbag the start of this race pretty hard. Started with Maria and bit behind Cody and started off with a 7:52-ish first mile. Okay, getting the jitters out, don't need to complete drop the anchor to slow down yet. Started running down State Street and Maria was still pushing on the throttles. We got to the bottom of State Street and she took off. I ended up seeing her for most of the race not too far ahead of me, maybe 50 to 100 meters. The second mile was sub 7:30, but then I settled in a bit better. It wasn't my usual get on a wire and cruise at a pace; I was surging around quite a bit. I started to feel some fatigue around mile 6 and the heat started coming on in earnest. I ended up dousing myself three or four times, but was also grabbing gatorade for the last four stations. I actually ran the whole way for this race (!) which I was not expecting. I tried to kick too hard at the end and my left knee rapidly started twinging. I think my left knee is less stable than my right, so when I push hard, I overstride which throws my balance all to hell. That's something that I'm less concerned about at this instant, but once I'm running workouts again, I really need to watch that.
Overall, this was a very nice race. For the fifth year that I've run it, it's been very well run. And hey, two medals this year!