I was a little frantic in the morning because traffic was a little worse than I expected. I also missed out on the last port-o-potty visit, but so it goes. I had also forgotten my race belt, so I had to swing by and get pins before the start. I found some and made my way to the front of the start line for wave 1 with about 5 minutes to spare. No time to warm up. Oh well. The horn blew and I was off. The course was basically an out and back along the coast highway with a few miles from the start at the mall to the ocean and back. It's billed as a flat course, but there are some rollers. Nothing killer, but I wouldn't classify it as flat, either. I made it through the first 2 miles in around 12:30 or so and was feeling pretty good, so I kept at that pace as best I could. After about 5 miles, I was still feeling pretty good and was maintaining my target pace pretty easily with my HR in the low 160s, so I decided to go for it. I upped it a bit as I headed for the turnaround. For miles 2-7 or so, I was trying to stay with this guy in a blue tank top who was really cruising and hung with him for a while. I got to about mile 8 and these two other guys came up behind me and the blue guy went with them as they passed. I probably could've stayed with them, but with 5 miles to go still I didn't want to completely blow up, so I continued along at my pace and focused in on another guy in red. I stayed with that guy all the way. We came back through Carlsbad village and with about 2 miles to go he picked it up a notch so I responded. Then with a mile to go he went even harder and I did my best to stay with him. I was really fatigued over the last 2 to 3 miles and I was definitely feeling the big effort, but I still had something left. So I hit the 13 mile marker and then headed hard around the corner to the finish. He kind of slowed up to wait for a different guy so I took advantage and sprinted to the end and just barely beat him. It's always fun to go hard at the end - that's me trying to stay with those two guys ;-)
Overall, it was a great race. I will probably have a couple of days recovery and that will affect my training for this week, but it was worth it. I cut 4.5 minutes off my time from March of last year and I think I can go down another minute or two by March of this year. My splits were also amazingly consistent, which I was really happy with:
Mile 1 - 6:39 HR 157 (some uphill to go over the freeway)
Mile 2 - 5:39 HR 160 (some downhill, but no idea what happened here!!)
Mile 3 - 6:31 HR 146 (huh?)
Mile 4 - 6:19 HR 163
Mile 5 - 6:32 HR 166
Mile 6/7 - 13:01 HR 166 (missed the mile 6 marker)
Mile 8 - 6:29 HR 165
Mile 9 - 6:30 HR 164
Mile 10 - 6:29 HR 166
Mile 11 - 6:29 HR 167
Mile 12 - 6:38 HR 167 (missed the lap by a few seconds because I grabbed some water)
Mile 13 - 6:05 HR 166
Last 0.1 - 0:42 HR 174
I was pretty happy with all of those 6:29s and 6:30s in a row. Very consistent when I needed to stay focused and on pace.
Overall, this was an excellent race. A very fast field, too. The winner did a 1:02!! My 1:23:58 time was good for 81st out of over 7000 runners and 20th out of 469 in my age group. That time at Shamrock'n would've been good for 13th overall so that gives an idea of the quality of the field. It also had some tri pros - Joanna Zeiger finished 5th in the Women's race!
A great day, a great race, and I'm looking forward to the next event!
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