Around the Bay – Take Deux

 The race:  Finished 2:42minThis was possibly the first race where I didn’t have a Personal best on time.  I knew it would happen at some point, my weight would plateau or my fitness would change.  The race itself was good, the rain started long before the race started and with that brings all the clothing questions of wanting to be warm but not over dressed.  I chose my base layer, short sleeve over it and then my new RF vest.  I was also glad I went for the pants as opposed to shorts because I would have frozen for sure.  The goal was 2:30 and I knew based on last year that hills in the second half are the hardest and the spot most likely to loose time.  2:30 also meant 5min km pace and I knew that if I was going to loose time in the hills, I needed to make some time in the front half.  I started out fast and by about 10km I had worked up about a 1min lead on my pace.  The difference this year versus last was that I was able to go harder (perceived effort – I ran without my HR monitor) and was really feeling strong until about 22km where my paced completely slowed….  I was using my garmin as well and the one thing I didn’t do was mark each km to get an accurate pace per km – so the pace that I had going was an avg… good because that’s ultimately what I wanted but bad because I couldn’t see where the tough kms where.  I did run up that big hill but when I got to the top everything cramped – toes, legs, hands – yes hands.. I’ve never had that before but evidently it does happen and god was it painful, they couldn’t move, I think it was more cold cramp then muscle cramp.  I walked a bit to gather myself but by then everything was hurting… I got running but it felt like the old mans hobble and everything was slow…I finished as I always knew I would and as I look back I’m not unhappy about not achieving my goal – we have to set goals – sometimes we set realistic ones and sometimes we set goals that are just out of reach.  If we always set goals that were achievable, I’m sure we would ask our selves if we could have done more, gone faster, pushed harder.  Because as humans we need to be agitated – pushed to the point of sometimes believing that we can do something.  Do I feel that I can run 30km in 2:30min?  Yes, unfortunately it just didn’t happen that day.  I am proud of my accomplishments, and sore knowing that I did my best…. Congrats to all those Team RF members who did this race and made it through such terrible weather.