Blessing of the Fleet Eve
I am trying to look at pre-race preparation as another goal. I made sure to get as much sleep as possible the week of (average 9 hours/night), have all my gear ready, iPod charged, and obviously Kara Goucher and Without Limits queued in my Youtube tab. Pasta the night before. Everything that I'd want to optimize race time. There was this one tiny issue; 2 weeks of riding the pine since my knee and lower back decided, "Tang, 1:20? Fahhgedaboudit". (Apparently my body is also Italian)
Blessing of the Fleet
Since the crew of Danato, Jess, and I worked the day of, our car pool didn't hit I-95 traffic until 4pm with a race time of 6pm. The good news was the weather was 10 degrees cooler than what I expected, settling in to the mid 70s with drizzle. Despite the lights of South County, we managed to arrive at 5:15 just in time to mark our territory in the woods as being a male proves an advantage in that aspect. That put the kibosh on coconut flavored coffee sending me in to 6-year old me, dancing around cross-legged while waiting in line for the portapotties.
Jess and Dr. Estus had to wait in the obscene line that snaked through the parking lot. Meanwhile, I'm parked underneath a speaker that's pumping "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and Danato, today's quote machine, noticed that there was surprisingly a lack of runners wearing Blessing shirts, the ultimate runner's faux pas.
Danato and I waited until the last 10 minutes to see if they were going to join us but the time had come.
The race officials must have wanted to get us out of there early as we heard the familiar gun shot about 7 minutes before 6pm.
And we were off to the usual crawling pace as the immediate left turn on to the course narrowed to two lanes. Now in any other circumstance, I would have loved this but the first mile or so I was boxed in by 6 girls as I tried to ride the sidewalk with Danato to avoid weaving through the crowd. We stayed together through roughly the first 3 miles at a bit over 8 minute pace. At this point, I knew this wouldn't be 1:20 and under with an intact back so I told him if he goes, leave me behind. I caught up to Jess at this point and went along my merry way. Further along, I passed by Sri's old place and remembered that in my younger days, I was planning on running there and back for 10-11 miles a long time ago when we lived in Bonnet.
Due to the possibility of rain, I didn't feel comfortable breaking the Shuffle out which I definitely needed to zone out today. The fact that the front end of my shoulders were getting sore meant I had to down shift my gear.
The turn in to the woods was a nice break as it was less humid and cooler than Ocean Road. I saw the building where a pre-pharm Tang in the rain promoted voting Yes on getting the new pharmacy building (Vote Yes on 2?) and then we popped out on to 108. Somewhere along the way people were handing out bags of ice.
Yea, bags of ice.
But beggars can't be choosers (apparent by every pit stop at every water station to swish, spit, shower and repeat) so I took that and applied to the lower back.
The long stretch of 108 left me a lot of time to think, yea this is me positive splitting. We then turned back in to the woods as I tried to tangent my way as much as possible seeing as how my lack of training wasn't going to make up for it. I kept thinking, get to mile 8 then turn the speed up as I was still within my 1:20 goal.
We started to see more crowd support in this neighborhood (and even a PBR/ Miller Lite water station). Around mile 8, who do I see?
Mr. Hartnett handing off water to none other than Eamonn's sister. My pride, despite my back, was on the line so I caught up and asked where ol' Eamer was and in air quotes, I got "he's working". Towards the last two miles, I knew I had to run 7 minute pace for a shot at 1:20 which wasn't happening so I slowed up to avoid blowing up. What didn't help were the false mile markers made infamous by some of the crowd. "Only x miles left". Erroneous. Erroneous on all counts.
The walkers took off an hour ahead of us so towards the end, you'd get these roving obstacle courses made of walking walls of women 5 wide in one lane traffic. Since I am not a walker I can be insensitive in saying this but could you possibly go single file? Same with people in the hallways at work, but I digress.
There was someone in the crowd handing out tiny USA flags the last half mile and following the race mantra of "beggars can't be choosers", I took it and held it high. I couldn't just jog it in with Old Glory. Due to the random wrong mile shouting going on, I wanted visual confirmation of the finish line before I could sprint waving the flag in what I hope was caught on film. Future motivational poster candidate for sure.
Danato spotted me as I went through my usual post-race pseudo-dry heave. I think I could run blindfolded and ear muffed and still know where the finish line was based on my Jedi gag reflexes.
In my best Charlie Murphy impression after basketball in the Prince skit, the race served us hot dogs.
Hot dogs. Who is in charge of food?
Also spotted at the end, a Jersey Shore faithful with a blow out. I give you credit for keeping that up the whole race random Guido dude.
Jess and Dr. Estus (aka the mayor of the Blessing) both creamed last year's times.
After a while at the finish chute, we walked towards the shuttle stop near the old Narragansett Casino/ Coast Guard House as I got a free shower thanks to the fire engine. Let me tell you, the school bus we got on reeked thanks to the ten miles x 60+ runners.
I got to talk to a fellow runner who is going to run the Providence half next week with a cousin from the Woodlands/ Houston and the only reason I mention this is I feel every time someone has a relative or knows someone from Texas up here, that is where they are from.
Since we arrived later and parked in the auxiliary parking lot, we were dropped off a ways away from the car. Jess, 'the glass is half full' girl, said we will hopefully miss traffic and we definitely did as we walked around for 20 minutes.
quote of the day:
'I'm going to do awful things to my foam roller.'
-Danato
Post-race, my hammies are sore so that tells me I definitely was undertrained for this. Shaved head > mane for racing. Sorry, Pre. The jury's still out on PM racing. I'll have to reconvene on this topic once I get back in to race shape.
Despite all the negative aspects I brought up, all in all I was happy for what was somewhere between a training run and race pace in terms of effort. The course was mostly flat and the crowd support helped towards the end. Running around our old stomping grounds definitely helped me feel better. 3 out of 3 on the PR front ain't bad either.
