Breakfast was a Baker's Breakfast Cookie and hot mint tea. This was just going to be a training run, so I was mainly concerned with feeling good and having a good time. I was TIRED this morning because I chaperoned a 3:00-midnight LAN party for my students on Friday night. I don't really sleep well before big races, and I'm a 5-6 hour a night girl anyhow, so I wasn't too concerned. Unfortunately one of the parents was (RUDELY) over half an hour late, so I raced on 4.5 hours of sleep. Oh well!

Arrived at 7:30 for an 8:00 race and found it cold, windy, and cold and windy and a little wet. Unfortunately I'd forgotten my gloves. Went and grabbed my number and chip and sat in the car as they'd announced a late start of 8:20.

Goodie bags were given out. Nothing to write home about; just a bunch of flyers for other races. But that's okay, it's only in its second year. Instead of a shirt we got race socks. Nice! I already have a shirt from last year, and who needs one more shirt?

The race was held up a little longer because the port-a-potty line was long. I found this irritating as it was freezing and really windy. It had already been delayed and if people didn't take care of that before now, then too bad! I'm sorry, but seriously. I think it's disrespectful to the rest of the racers to hold up the race for a few who have to pee.

The run didn't go as fast as I'd like. I lost 3 minutes over last year, but overall I think I did okay. I was really disappointed with a few of my splits. Even with run/walk intervals I rarely have 11 min miles! I attribute it to two poor decisions I made last week. One was to host a late night LAN before the race. The other was that I really overdid it on speed work on Wednesday. I did speedwork out four miles, which left four miles to run back. My toes started cramping with two miles to go and to compensate I was running on the side of my foot, and bruised it. Oh well! Live and learn!

I'm sure the wind was a factor as well, but I did do better last year.

Go to bed earlier and not do the heavy speedwork on Wednesday. It was only a training run, though. Oh, and I should have brought gloves!

Walked around and talked to Chris who came in 2 min before me, then waited for Theresa who came in about 2 min after me. Stretched my very cold muscles and ate part of a PB&J sandwich. My complaint about the post race is that they had unplugged the hot water and the photographer was gone. I know I was in the second half of the runners of the 30k, but how disappointing not to have someone to take a picture. Plus the people who ARE out there longer are probably colder than the hard competitors. How hard would it have been to have kept the water and coffee hot (since the plug was actually right there, just laying on the ground).

My poor decisions the week before and, once again, the fact that I'm not very fast!

This is still a "new" race and I really applaud their efforts. Improvements this year included more water stations, gel at every station, and LOTS of volunteers. I would like events to start on time. I also really wish that they'd make an effort to make sure that post-race food was available to ALL racers. There was food, but they advertised warm food (nothing there), and hot coffee/cocoa was cold.