raceday +5

So the race was this past sunday, and while i meant to be on here both the night before (but didn't want to pop the hotel's $15 for wifi just to do so) and sooner after, here i finally am. ok. the good news is that indeed i finished. not like some i saw limping their way through, certainly not suffering to any extent. that alone is cause for major jump for joy. i set out to do a thing, and got it done.

• training
• shoes
• resting when i didn't feel well rather than overtraining (ok, i did some of that early, but learned my lesson)
• doing the longs
• living in a hilly neighborhood
• saying loud and often enough that i was doing it, so to back down would have been equally public
• not setting overly ambitious goals
• managing the race itself (sleep, fuel, pace)

all of these had a role to play.

i think the biggest disappointment was in not breaking 5 hrs. well, not that i didn't break 5 hrs, but that i could have and didn't. the first half of the race went great. pace was steady and manageable and even better than i wanted -- but not too much so.

a couple of twinges here and there in the middle section, but sucked it up to keep going. i probably needn't have been but did fear that beat the bridge/bus deadline.

but i kept looking at my garmin which was telling me that i was ahead of pace for the 5hr, and since i was in the midst of a bunch of folks who were taking longer and longer walk breaks (in the first half, i only walked at the drink stops. heck, that was plenty) so was i. it was unnecessary and undisciplined and bad, because in the end it cost me the 5hr.

could i have done the same second half pace as the first? unlikely. truth be told i'm probably not in good enough shape. but could i have done the second half a steady 45sec slower than the first, say? probably.

either i need to learn how to use the garmin better, or go get something else.

back to work. more later