{"id":4904,"date":"2015-03-31T16:18:24","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T22:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/?p=4904"},"modified":"2016-04-12T18:53:58","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T00:53:58","slug":"austin-1020-found-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/31\/austin-1020-found-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin 10\/20 – Found It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you do everything right before a race.\u00a0 This was not one of those times.<\/p>\n

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Exibit A:<\/p>\n

Get good sleep the week of the race, right?\u00a0 Not staying up until FOUR AM on a Thursday having drinks?\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0 Hi Quix, you are not 21 anymore.\u00a0 This resulted in a whole 4.5 hours sleep and I was just flattened on Friday.<\/p>\n

Exhibit B:<\/p>\n

Don’t try anything new at the expo, right?\u00a0 Well, it was the day before the day before so I let things fly fast and loose and tried this nutrition drink.\u00a0 Holy caffeine rush, batman!\u00a0 I just got a little nauseous and a headache after twitching and chattering for a few hours, but Zliten got sick off it.\u00a0 Lesson learned.<\/p>\n

Exhibit C:<\/p>\n

Make sure to stay off your feet and rest the day before the race, yeah?\u00a0 Well, unless the weather is just WAY too perfect and you go stand up paddle boarding and take your wetsuit for a swim in the lake instead clocking your fastest OWS pace yet.<\/p>\n

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Oh, and not to mention grocery shop, batch cook for the week, do laundry, and clean off the butcher block.\u00a0 Not much feet up time there.<\/p>\n

A and B were mistakes, but I believe C actually made me so full of happy and joy (the lake part, I don’t get that excited about chores, heh) that it helped.<\/p>\n

I didn’t fuck everything up.\u00a0 I ate what I think was perfect pre-race fuel for the distance.\u00a0 Lunch was a burger no bun and fries.\u00a0 Dinner was veggie beef soup and salad and ribs.\u00a0 I snacked on some fruit and sun butter.\u00a0 I made sure I was full but not stuffed when I went to bed.<\/p>\n

This race is one of my favorites because it’s 3 miles from my house.\u00a0 Which, with an 8am start, meant I didn’t have to set my alarm until 6, and even that was early enough to get a leisurely wake up (quarter scoop purple stuff, coconut water, kind bar, another bottle of water, the ush) and I even got a half mile warmup on my treadmill which I think is happening every home race ever.<\/p>\n

We got to the race around 7:30, which was just enough to drop our bags off at work (with potential stuff to shower after if we felt like it), use the bathrooms one more time, jog a bit to the start, and get there just in time for the national anthem.\u00a0 Perfect.\u00a0 No standing around getting stiff legs.<\/p>\n

As the gun went off, I got a little choked up.\u00a0 Wha?\u00a0 No idea where that came from for a race I didn’t really plan to care that much about.\u00a0 Emotions are weird.<\/p>\n

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Trying to take a jumping pic is hard.<\/em><\/p>\n

The good news is that for me, 10 miles is not long right now.\u00a0 The question was what pace could I pull out of myself over that 10 miles?\u00a0 My super A+ goal was 9:30s.\u00a0 Considering I’ve pulled off maybe 10 miles that pace TOTAL of the 372 miles I’ve ran this year, this was ambitious.\u00a0 A goal was to beat last year – at 1:37:08, that was still pretty ambitious.\u00a0 B goal was to sub 1:40.\u00a0 C goal was to feel like I made a good effort, running with my lungs a little burn-y, no matter what the result.<\/p>\n

So, my plan was to run fast but sustainable, and see where that left me.\u00a0 The first mile was a little crowded to get out and going, but when it ticked over at 9:40, and I was feeling pretty good, I knew it would be a decent day.\u00a0 I was in “music up, heads down racing Quix” mode.\u00a0 Happy I was able to get there.<\/p>\n

The course was different from the last few years – it was essentially two parts and they switched them.\u00a0 I liked it.\u00a0 The killer hill that used to come at mile 8 and change now came at 1 and change.\u00a0 I was able to give it some juice instead of just try to survive it.<\/p>\n

The only bad part of the day was the wind.\u00a0 It was 15-25 mph that day, which was AWESOME when it was at your back, but NOT awesome pushing into it.\u00a0 After the 5k mark we found our first “uphill, into the wind” section.\u00a0 I burned another match there to keep pace.\u00a0 We finally got to the downhill part, down Burnet Road, and… holy crap, the wind made it still feel uphill.<\/p>\n

That part was a little low for me.\u00a0 However, my brain found a shred of common sense.\u00a0 If the wind was strong enough to fuck up my downhill, it was TOTALLY going to help on the uphill.\u00a0 I pounded a salted watermelon GU (caffeinated) around mile 5-ish and burned one more match in my book past the Coke bottling plant uphill and turned back onto Burnet for the uphill… which didn’t feel uphill at all.\u00a0 Yay wind!\u00a0 10k came right before my garmin ticked over to 1 hour.\u00a0 Average pace wavered between about 9:38 and 9:42.<\/p>\n

They added a new out and back right around 7 and the gel had fully kicked in, so I pushed pretty hard down and back up that hill and… for the first time in the race, the miles started to go slow.\u00a0 I’m pretty sure that between 7 and 8 there was at least 2 miles, maybe 3.<\/p>\n

At 8 I perked up for 2 reasons.\u00a0 2 miles to go seemed short enough to celebrate the fact that I was in the running for at least a small PR, maybe something in the 1:36s, and MAYYYYBE even in the 1:35s.\u00a0 Also, it went back to downhill against the wind, so the paces started creeping into the 8s and I was feeling fine (well, like someone was leaning against my lungs a bit, but SUSTAINABLY so).\u00a0 Mile 9 was my fastest at 9:08.<\/p>\n

Then, mile 10 hit.\u00a0 The whole damn thing was uphill, and the way they changed the course, it was uphill into the wind.\u00a0 The good thing was it was mostly a straight shot, you could see the finish for the last .75 mile so it was calling you home.\u00a0 I started burning matches like crazy to get up that hill, to stay in the 9s.\u00a0 I found some pain face (my pictures are hilarious, yeah, no links :D), I growled a bit, but I saw the official gun time clocking me at a small PR, so I knew my chip time would be a bigger one!<\/p>\n

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I recovered, got a water, and then went to go cheer Zliten in… who came a lot quicker than I expected!\u00a0 He’s just coming back from an injury, and while he didn’t beat last year’s screaming pace, we both would have been mad at him if he did.\u00a0 We both decided that we’d rather drink better beer at home than wait for the super long beer tent line for miller 64, so we grabbed our bags and headed home.<\/p>\n

Stats:<\/p>\n