Mike in the parking lot pre-race
Mike and I ran the first half marathon pretty smoothly in 1:47 (8:09 pace). As we headed out for the second lap the rain started and the wind picked up. Awesome. The 2nd lap was going to be fun. Mike drifted back a little and we split up. It started to get harder to maintain the pace. It took 42 minutes to cover the next 5 miles (8:28 pace). Not too bad, but fatigue was setting in. Some walking through the water stations in the next two miles slowed me even more and I hit the 20 mile mark at 2:48 (Overall pace of 8:24). If I could average a pace at or under 9:10 for the final 10K, I could get the sub 3:45.... But I couldn't do it. Instead, it was 1 hour and 8 minutes of me walking and shleping through the rain while cramped and frozen, wondering why the hell was I doing this race. I crossed the line in 3:56. Things went about the same for Mike and he finished 5 minutes after me. Had we known we were so close we could've death marched it in together! After thawing out Mike and I grabbed a beer and drank to getting in a long training run. And we toasted our new purple Barney shirts:
Wtf? Who picked the color of the shirts this year?
