Sunday, December 4, 2011

Ridin Solo - Fiesta Half

Well not totally solo, but without my main man, Wade. He was feeling under the weather last night...we went to bed thinking he was going to race...not so much. He woke up feeling like crap, so I performed my race morning ritual alone, grabbed Kara and off we went.

Race morning ritual? Light English muffin with PB and jelly and a big fat to-go cup of hot coffee. Technical huh?

Race start: 7:30
Time of arrival: 7:12

Plenty of time to bag check and hit the Port-O-Potties. Except there were seriously 8 for all these runners. And most of the people in line were spectators. We were pretty irritated, but then I said "whatever, we are chip timed, let's just relax". So we did our thang, and jogged to the start and crossed over the mats about 2:00 minutes after gun time.

Glorious

 My goal? Meet or slightly beat my last half time. I didn't set a lot of expectations for this race...my hip has been bothering me, I was bummed that Wade was at home sick, missing out on the fun and it was cold. Like really cold. The start was just 39 degrees and it had SNOWED the day before.

In Arizona. Ridiculous. My body is NOT used to those kinds of temps.

I spent the first 4 miles weaving through people and ticking off the pace groups...2:30, 2:20, 2:15, 2:07, 2:00. Once I got there, I settled into my groove. I found a cool lookin dude in an Ironman shirt and decided to stick with him. He was just coming off IM Cozumel, so he was taking it "easy". RUDE. We made friends, enjoyed the nice quiet course, chatted, jammed out and I laughed as he played the air guitar and drums to the Maroon 5 blasting in his ears. We pushed each other through the last two miles and I came in under my goal time.

THAT is why I love the running community. Right there.

Community. Respect. Admiration. A Common Goal.

Official time: 1:53:41 (8:41/pace)

I'm really really happy with that. My girl Kara PR'd too.



I said Hello to a few friends from my running club, grabbed a Muscle Milk Light and got my butt home to my cute and sick hubby.

ANNNNNND...I'm totes eating pizza tonight.




1 comment:

  1. Great race! Sounds like you had a good time. Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete