Notes
We had some logistical issues today. DD drove to the finish, I picked her up and took her to our house, DW took us to start, then she went to church. After race, we took DD's car home, DW took it to pick up lunch, then DD and I took Subaru, DW took Volt, DSL took Camry to concert, then all three cars to Schilling Bridge for dinner.
Now to the race. Traffic between 70th and stadium was at a standstill, so DW dropped us off at East High entrance. We jogged up the hill to the start, ran into Michael, Ashley, Chris on the way to the bag drop and potatoes, er, porta potties. Starting line was pretty jammed, so I didn't officially meet my pacers here. I did meet Eddie (Walters) at the expo yesterday. Had conversations with him and Abby (Knight) during the race. Relieved that the pace didn't feel tough in the first two miles, and when they really started picking it up at mile five, I was able to keep up. Both pacers were constantly encouraging us; Eddie kept cracking bad jokes like the cop's looking the other way, let's run this red light. Abby, the giraffe lady, was cussing and belting out country songs loudly and off-key as she ran. I liked her, at least for this or a wild night at the bar.
At the halfway point, I noticed that I had switched to the more rapid 2-2 breathing, the first obvious indicator that I was starting to be stressed. As I expected, once we got to Devaney, I was sad, knowing that we had something like five more miles. Shortcuts were beginning to be tempting. Instead of telling us how great we were looking, Abby started telling us we don't make our goal without some pain. She was on with that. She started pulling away from me. My stated swamp goal, and knowing that the NYC qualifying was only a minute behind Abby motivated me to try to keep up with her. It was really tough, especially going up the arena bridge, but I pushed hard to the finish. Good thing, considering 1.5 seconds was so critical. I didn't think I had made it until later, when I saw the printout with the net time.
Michael G, Carol, Sue W, Jess R, and Marty were along the course cheering for me. There was even a Run Larry Run sign for me.
DD did well too, with a PR on inadequate training.
Approximate splits from my watch. I missed a couple of banners, and wasn't accurate on the starts and stops, but here's what I got. The 8:23 is the only one that's bugging me; that mile should have been pretty fast.
8:01 8:01
7:41 15:42
7:15 22:57
8:23 31:20
7:34 38:54
7:36 46:30
7:34 54:04
7:36 1:01:40
7:37 1:09:17
7:40 1:16:57
7:40 1:24:37
7:49 1:32:26
7:54 1:40:20
0:49 1:41:09
Official splits:
First half: 50:57.2, 7:46, 277th place
Second half: 50:01.2, 7:38, 204th place
Strong negative split. Unaware that I passed 73 people in the second half. Maybe first half was soft.