Saturday, November 5, 2011

Race Recap: Denver Rock N Roll 1/2 Marathon

This was a race we signed up for on a whim. The plan was that after August and the achieving of infinity, that we'd have something to keep us motivated and something to train for.

Yeah...

With the wedding, the aftermath of 70.3, and just everyday stress, training went by the wayside. The excuses are not good and numerous. I'll get into that in another post here later. Anyway, we decided this race didn't matter and we would have fun, with T taking pictures and me tweeting (that's right, I'm on Twitter. Follow me at bgeist111.)

It was a cold cold morning. You can guess what we said when we woke up. When we got downtown, we found a decent parking space. T realized she forgot her sunglasses and would have to run with some ghetto ones she keeps in her car. We began the walk downtown to find the porta-potties and the race start. A side note - we picked up our packets the day before.

It took some effort to find the porta-potties, but once we did, we did our thing then had to go to the bag drop off. It took asking a volunteer to find it. Once there, we realized this process was not going to be efficient and we were grateful we were there early.

After the gear drop off, we went back towards the start. I grabbed a bottle of water and killed it. The National Anthem was played and then we waited for our wave to start. Due to the massive crowd, there was no way to work it back to our wave, so we just waited for it. It came by, and we wedged our way in. Hit the start line and off we went!

It was a nice morning, if not cold. We took it very easy and enjoyed running in downtown Denver. We saw sights like the Blue Bear, Pepsi Center, and Coors Field. All this time, we were maintaining a crummy 11:20 pace, but we were still enjoying ourselves. We walked a bit, stripped down (damn cold making me overdress) and kept on going. There was a hill as we turned onto 17th that we destroyed, which in hindsight was probably not a good idea but felt good at the time.

As we ran down 17th, we cruised by D Bar Desserts, which is one of our favorite restaurants in Denver. I tweeted to them and said hello. We then got close to City Park, which we knew was the meat and potatoes of the run. I figured if we could survive that, we could salvage our times and somehow make this a respectable 1/2 Marathon.

This is where the story goes downhill...

I had to pee really bad. Poor hydration management. I saw some porta potties and ran towards them. I told T to go on and that I would catch up. Famous last words. I struggled through City Park, at one point even tweeting "the wheels are coming off the train."

I saw T at around mile 8 on the out and back, and told her not to wait. Not possible, apparently. She told me she would and kept her word. From that point on, which was around mile 10, it was just going to be a shuffle by me to the finish.

We shuffled through the final miles, and at one point, I actually called Kris, telling her my feet and legs killing me. She gently reminded me that I have already accomplished a lot this year and that my lack of training for this run could be forgiven for everything else that I had accomplished, including marrying my best friend. With T urging me on, we pressed forward. For her to hold back even though she could have done much better, she deserves kudos for that.

Crossing the finish line was a huge relief. We actually crossed together holding hands. Our time was lousy; the memories were memorable and ultimately, I'm glad I did this race. I learned some things for sure. I cannot B.S. my way through a 1/2 Marathon. A distance that large commands respect.

Official time - 2:39:52.

No comments:

Post a Comment