Up at 5AM and on the road by 5:30AM. Horribly hungover. Used to be able to compete hungover and not lose a step, though that was way back in high school. Not quite that kind of machine anymore. From all the looks I got, I'm sure people could still smell booze on me when I picked up my packet. Which was fine with me, I love pissing off road runners.
Had a goal of breaking 90 minutes for this race. Then I thought running 1:33:57 would be acceptable, as that's Boston qualifying pace.
Didn't feel like running at all, so I skipped the warm up. Figured I'd just start slow. And I did start slow, or at least it felt so. Hit mile one in a very surprising 6:38.
Continued to mentally bitch myself out for drinking so much the night before, for wasting $45 and ruining my race before it even began. Yet somehow during my self-scolding I was clicking off 6:30 miles. Somewhere around mile eight I said to myself, "self, maybe you should quit whining about what you did yesterday and race." I did, and I passed a ton of people over those last few miles. Had to push like hell to keep the same pace, as my legs just aren't used to spinning that fast, but while everyone else was fading I was holding steady.
And it paid off, I passed hundreds of people after that first mile. Finished in a time of 1:26:09, much faster than I thought I could run. Good for 24th place out of at least 800 runners (they only list the top 800 on the website - there were probably about 1200 runners who started).
I'm not suggesting that racing hungover is a smart thing to do, but I'm proud I didn't use it as an excuse to bail on a race effort. Last year I was hungover and threw in the towel at this race and ran 1:41. Shows you the difference between my training for Hardrock and what I did for Leadville. Taking things a lot more seriously this year. Fighting tooth and nail to meet cutoff times isn't something I'd like to go through again.
Next up for me is the Greenland 50K. My first ultra since Leadville. My current PR for that distance is 4:22, ran at the pancake flat sea level course at Rocky Raccoon. It'll be tough to lower that on a Colorado trail, but that's what I'm gonna go for.
4 comments:
You are a bad bitch, nice job.
You spent $45 on PBR??
No, retard, the race was $45. No amount of money spent on Pabst is a waste!
That would have explained the killer hangover...didn't you say you were getting PBRs for .33? That's around 136 good 'ens!
Post a Comment