Mixed feelings…
Today I ran my 2nd Boilermaker 15K. I’m really ambivalent about it. On one hand, it’s a great race – a really challenging course with tons of volunteer & crowd support – so you can’t help but love being there and being part of it. Even when you’re hurting. On the other hand, I’ve come away quite dissatisfied with my own performance, but the stinging truth is that I got out what I put in. I woefully (foolishly) underprepared for this race. I just let a lot of things get in the way of the miles and hills that should have been accumulated before toeing the line this morning. But even though I knew full well that I was not up to par, I felt like I could pull out 9.3 miles in any case – and in my fantasy mind, could just kind of *naturally* run the race I ran in 2005 – the one I trained for. As you can probably surmise, I did not run that race in my memory again. In fact, today there were times I wondered if I’d finish. It was sucky hard. I finished about 15 minutes slower this year than in ’05. Of 12,000 runners, I was probably in the last 200 or so. But you know, it was the hardest I’d ever worked to cross a finish line. I dug deep to keep running, as slow as it was. Really deep. And I’m kinda proud of that, but at the same time, kind of ashamed that I didn’t do the work beforehand to make it something other than just dragging my ass to the end. Ultimately, I’m not lamenting. I’m not beating myself up but I am wistfully contemplating how much more satisfying it could have been if I had done the work. So now – I’ll do the work. It makes no sense not to.
On a happy note, I had a most prestigious houseguest and it was really nice to have someone to hang around with at the start and compare race observations with afterwards. I also now have learned that, when you walk into a post-race party with 12,000 competitors and infinity spectators, it’s not enough to say ‘meet me in the Family Reunion area.’ Ya really gotta have a plan. Actually, it wasn’t that bad – there were tons of beer trucks all over the place so it made walking around and looking for Jon alot easier.
Pre-race, fresh like daisies
Less than 1/10th mile to the finish. The supreme effort it took to raise both hands in the air may have cost me several minutes.
Obligatory post-race beer picture (well, for the lush anyway).
Comment by Pamalamadingdong
Sunday July 08 2007 @ 9:33 pm
Did you bring some scooby snacks for that guy?