the perfect race ....

The whole purpose of all this blogging was training for the KC Half Marathon, that happened almost two weeks ago. And yet I have failed to enter my race report ... well I've been busy.

And others really covered it pretty well in their recap of the weekend.

But really it was a perfect race, with the one exception that it wasn't run under my own name, so I can't claim it on athlinks.com or print out the results for proof when I'm old(er), fat(ter) and slow(er) that I once ran a very respectable half-mary. But that's not why I run ...

I was concerned about my head cold, the fact that I had done a long, albeit slow, run just over a week before the race and frankly had very little running base.

Sister Ann covered the pre-race meal and porta-potty snafu pretty well. My neighbor convinced me the night before the Sedalia Du that a full-bodied beer would be better carbo-loading. Since I went out and had a good race then I decided it would work well for the half as well. But mostly I hydrated alot the day before, on top of my generally well-hydrated self.

So the race starts and I'm in line to pee. But with chip timing it wasn't that much of a concern. And I'm really glad I did because I had NO g-i issues during the race and those can really suck, even though they had porta-potties along the way.

I took off at a fairly slow pace, I thought, and quickly caught several of the marathon pace groups - 5:30, 5:15, 5:00, etc. I decided if I caught 4:00, I would need to chill, but I never did. I was running faster than a 4-hour full marathon pace, but they must have had too much of a head start.

The race was pretty packed in through about 2 miles. I saw a girl from spin class chugging up the hill to the Liberty Memorial. She is running the NYC marathon this weekend and was going to do 20 miles of the marathon course. I had to expend alot of energy getting around people at this point. And the tight turn by the Memorial was a bit of a traffic jam.

But finally we started to unclog along 31st (?) and I saw Ann and Tim at about the 3 mile mark on Main. I still felt great at that point and was happy to know that my first couple miles were well under 9 minute pace and they felt slow!!

We chugged down Main to Westport, all of it pretty flat I think. One good thing about a porta-potty delay is that I passed people for almost the whole race, which believe me, is alot better than going out too fast and getting passed by everyone later.

There weren't huge crowds of people except along the Plaza and at the end, but there were people along the course the whole way. I love that in a race.

We turned down Roanoke and it was a slight downhill to 47th, where I knew my parents would be somewhere. I guess it was near mile 6 when I saw them. I still felt great, still holding back a little, because, hey, 13 miles is a long freakin' way.

My neighbor and her little dog were further east on 47th. I actually wasn't even looking up when she yelled to me.

All of this was pretty flat. We made the turn onto Troost and then Gillham. I took a little water around mile 8. Had to stop and walk of course because I cannot drink from a cup and run at the same time. Not sure I can drink from anything and run actually.

At that point I started looking for Ann, Tim, Lisa or Hazel. They were further up, as the race headed into Hyde Park, mile 9 maybe? I was starting to feel it a bit then and the little tiny incline up Harrison that seemed negligible in the car was a beyotch at that point. Fortunately, I'm still around alot of folks. Plenty of room but plenty of things to look at. My favorite was along Paseo when someone drove down the sidewalk to get to the sidestreet, because apparently waiting for an empty space in the race was too much.

The suckage point was there by the time we got to 18th and Vine, but somehow I managed to keep pushing the pace. I would love to know my splits in this race because I'm pretty sure I ran a negative split. Of course the stretch down Paseo was a slight decline, which helped, but wreaked havoc on my quads for two days afterwards.

After the loop-de-loop around there, we headed down 18th for the last mile. I pretty much know the order of the streets in my head, so I just counted them down ... Holmes, Cherry, Locust, Oak ....

Final little surge by the TWA building and then downhill into the Freighthouse. My family and Lisa were there along the finish line, which was pretty packed, or so it seemed. I was starting to get a big time cramp in my left calf, so I was trying to land on my heel to stretch it out and not crap out with 100 ft left. Seeing everyone there was a big boost and I charged across the finish line and checked my watch... WOOHOO ... 1:52:44!!!!!!

Back when this whole endeavor got started, and I doubted my ability to run enough to train for this, I wanted to do as well as I had done in the Hospital Hill and Humana half marathons that I had done in 2002-03, 2:02. I felt pretty good in those races until the 10 mile point, where I just nosedived and lost alot of time.

As my training went on and I did a few shorter races, I thought doing 9 mile pace - 1:58 - might be possible or maybe if I had a really awesome day, a 1:55. Somehow I am a little faster though I run much less than I did four or five years ago. And my overall conditioning is MUCH better due to cross-training. I have good muscle memory for running, due to 20 years of it, so I didn't have to build up to the pounding of running as much.

I think I managed to avoid the 10 mile crash because of some 30 mile hard rides with E and my duathlons, which took about 2 hours. And my previous half-marys were pre-yoga, which obviously has done much for my flexibility.

Or maybe it's 'cause I was only 31 ....