Mother Nature's Spite

The week leading into the race was one of the hottest ones yet. It was almost unbearable during the daytime, but after the sun set it became absolutely gorgeous. Perfect racing weather. Somewhere along the line we must have done something to annoy Mother Nature. It seemed like she was teasing us, giving us this amazing weather and then seemingly out of spite giving us some of the coldest crappiest weather we have had since we got here in January. After two weeks of temperatures averaging probably around 27C(80f) She throws us one day of cold, wind and rain. It only hit about 10C(50f) and rained periodically throughout the day and wind gusts reaching 40km/h(25mph). It must not have been me that pissed Mother Nature off because she calmed things down quite a bit for my race. It was still pretty cold, and the track was quite wet with a few little puddles, but in comparison to the conditions for some of the other races, it was alright. I wore arm-warmers for the first time, which were a huge help. Ever since Geulph in 2007 where I made the rookie mistake of wearing ONLY shorts and singlet, my extremities are quite sensitive to the cold. I also used a neti-pot before the race for the first time. Not going to lie, I would have no problems being a spokesman for neti-pots, it really made quite the difference.

My race went really well. Wynn and I had planned to try and go with 68s this time instead of the 70s from last time. It just so happened that there was a rabbit in the race that was going 67s, all I had to do was sit in the little pack of 4 or 5 and hang on. Wynn got my splits as the following.

68.8 - 67.8 - 68.9 - 68.5 - 68.9 - 68.9 - 67.9 - 68.0 - 68.3 - 71.8 - 72.0 - 71.0 - 33.1

So I was able to hold on to those 68s pretty well... except for the last mile and finish in 14:24.72. I think it was more mental than it was me rigging up. While I was running I could feel I was slowing down, but just didn't dig and grind it out. Good news is, I know I've got about 10seconds more in me!

I am exhausted from a long night of post-race not sleeping. I must head to bed now.
Goodnight folks.