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February 18, 2007

AT&T Austin Marathon

It looks much better on paper than it did in real life. These are our TOTAL (not per-mile) over/unders for all the split times in the results (with excuses in parenthesis):

Mile 2: +17 (The first mile it was IM-possible to run on pace with all the walkers and whatnot. I wish we'd started closer to the front, but we didn't want to start in front of the 3:40 group.)

Mile 10: +13

Mile 17: -9

Mile 21: -15

Mile 26.2: -28

So ... at no point were we more than a second per mile over or under. Which is awesome.

BUT ... and this is big ... I did not have the big finish I'd imagined. Somewhere after mile 20 or so I lost the signal on the geekometer. Bob hadn't had a signal on his for miles at that point. I didn't really care so much since I knew I didnt need the signal to take my splits. But then I hit my split at 21 and realized that the "no signal" sign on the screen was blocking every single data field on the screen. I wiggled my wrist around stupidly, hoping I could see around it, but to no avail. I was getting tired, and not knowing what my split was made me muy nerviosa. I had my watch on but had only kept track of total time to that point, and after fiddling with the GPS for so many seconds it really wasn't worth it to hit a split on my watch. So I took my first split on the watch at mile 22 (3:08:48) I realized we were DEAD ON.

And this is where we started to panic a little bit. Poor Bob had less information than I did, and I didn't know what to tell him. I didn't want to fess up to the group that we both had lost our GPS. I should have had more faith in myself ... We had been so close to pace all through the race ... but without the computer and with tired, crampy legs and with knowing we had a dream-killer hill and a kick-you-when-you're-down hill coming up, I started having the dreaded "you're not going to make it" feeling. And it didn't help that Bob was feeling the same way.

And so our ideas of encouraging everyone up the dream-killer hill just turned into "get my own ass up this hill ASAP" for both Bob and me. My legs hurt. I knew they would. I have never run miles 22-25 on not-tired legs, no matter how much I've trained. I don't care how relaxed I am for the rest of the race. There were no pep talks. There was no keeping the group together. There was A LOT of passing the sign back and forth. On the screamin' downhill at the finish I felt like I was hauling ass. And I may have been, relatively speaking, since we were so dead on at 22 and got to 26.2 with 28 seconds to spare. With a really slow hilly mile in there somewhere.

I took only one split at 23 on my watch and then was so worried that I wouldn't finish on time that I stopped looking at my watch. I'll bet anything, though, that I was pretty damn close to on-time at 25 and then made up all that time on the sprint downhill to the finish.

This is a great course, though. I still maintain that it's a hard course, but I loved running through the neighborhoods. There was more crowd support this year than ever before. By a lot. And the neighborhood streets are prettier than the roads we've run previously.

So ... yay 3:45 pace group!

Now back to work.

Posted by jenandmats at February 18, 2007 8:17 PM

Comments

Great job! That is so impressive - staying so steady and so on pace - and you didn't even have your computers to help out when you most needed them! Congrats!

Posted by: Beth at February 19, 2007 4:52 AM

Cancelling my Garmin watch order as I type! Great job on pacing.

Posted by: Daryl P at February 19, 2007 8:42 AM

You did a fantastic job, and it sounds like it was vastly more stressful than running a marathon for yourself. Your group must be so grateful. You can pace me any day!

Posted by: Roslyn at February 19, 2007 6:39 PM

loved it, loved it, every written line, every trodden mile :-)

Posted by: corrado giambalvo at February 20, 2007 4:35 PM

Congrats on some perfecto pacing! I cannot believe yet another Austin Marathon has come and gone. How time does fly!

Posted by: Meghan at February 23, 2007 9:09 PM

Um, hello? Anyone in there? Is there a blogger still around? Nothing's happened on this site since I commented on February 23rd. Your readers are getting antsy. :)

No really, how's the running going? How's the cute munchkin?

Posted by: Meghan at March 8, 2007 6:45 PM

Yoohoo! Anyone home? So I checked your baby's blog site just to make sure you and your family still exist, and I was relieved to see that life appears to be continuing on for you. How are you?

Posted by: Meghan at April 6, 2007 8:51 PM