Kristin & I drove out early Friday afternoon and got to Lori's in plenty of time to settle in & chit chat while she cooked up a delish dinner.
The next day we were up mega early (especially me with my crazy 4am wake ups, ha) to get rolling ahead of the masses for the century.
It was freeeeezzzziiiiing the first hour but then it warmed up quickly to the most perfect mid 70s in clear sunny skies. We were very fortunate with weather this weekend as this upcoming one is supposed to be roughly 20deg colder and possibly raining! I stripped off my top layer of pants, socks, long sleeve baselayer gloves, and arm warmers within the first 90min :)
I spent the majority of the ride with Polly who let me just say is a badass- she drilled the century at a solid pace as well as the half with our bonus warm up (more on this later) all with insane pain from a root canal!!
The ride was so much fun. We got to the house at 105mi at around 5:20ride time (I think).
The rest of the afternoon was spent lounging by the pool, which was the perfect ice bath temperature and definitely helped all of us for the half mary the following day.
Another yummy homemade dinner, more red wine, and then we took a short trip over to hang with the Rehab United crew. The night wouldn't have been complete withouy froyo so we hit up Golden Spoon.
Not enough sleep later, it was time for 13.1....however, I rallied Polly to warm up from the house to the race start with me which we had mapped out to be 3.6 miles. 50min of running later, we had warmed up like 6 miles to the start- we had to book it when we were told it was "about a mile and a half that way"... literally got there as the announcer was going "four, three, two, one!..." haha awesome.
Needless to say I had my gel before mile 2 :)
The great thing about this bonus run beforehand was that I logged in good mileage for the day without having to gun out a cool down jog after that race effort and it exaclty mimicked the feeling in the legs that comes in aorund mile 18-20 of IM marathon.
At 6miles into the race I was with a little group holding 6:20;6:35s and thought wow, I may just break 1:30 today. But then at mile 8 my feet were throbbing and my legs weighed a ton each. Holding sub 7:30s was a big task.
My coach was actually happy with this as it made for excellent training, and proved my run hasn't completely disappeared. Now a mellow week and then Sin City!
