I get sick once every other year, once a year tops. Bummer that it just so happened a couple days before my last race of the year. Oh well, so it goes some times. I woke up and just felt drained; absolutely no energy. I ate a bowl of oatmeal, 2 bananas and took a shower and felt slightly better. Still not much energy and my head felt hot/congested. I debated between the 10k and half marathon. In fact as we drove to the race, I told my wife that if I hadn't already signed up, I wouldn't run at all today. This is the perfect reason why I don't like to pre-register and am willing to pay the extra on race-day.
I ran this course in 2008 and thought it was a pretty fair, honest course with just a couple mild rollers. They modified the start/finish so it was road the whole way, not grass and trail for the first couple miles. a huge improvement. The gun went off and I took the lead from the start, despite running with 5k and 10k runners. There were a lot of participants, just not many that want to run 5:15 for the first mile. Mile 2 and 3 were way off (7:37, 2:58) so at that point I stopped looking at my watch each mile and ignored the overall time until the finish. I ran everything from 5:15, 5:38, 5:25, etc. Who knows how many were off? I just tried to run by feel and survive a race when feeling less than 100%. I had a lead bicyclist in front of me and that helped keep me company as we ran out past farmlands on a peaceful, quiet road. I passed the 10k mark still in first and debated calling it a day. I didn't feel horrible though so I just kept going. Not much else to say. The course is great. The weather was fantastic. Lots of support along the way. And it was nice to finally run a race in the same town I live in for a change. Crossed the finish line in 1:10:42 and I didn't hit the wall in the process. Final mile in 5:05. Just wish I would have felt better and had a couple people to push the pace with along the way. Best part of all was the chocolate milk and soup at the finish. And my kid walked away with a 25lb pumpkin so he was happy too. Score for everyone.
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