Bako Race recap and inconvenient brain fart..

So i know you are all dying to hear about how the race went so with out further ado i will present you with my lovely rendition of the Bako 1/2 Marathon recap (hold on tightly the ride may get a little bumpy) :

First I had been reading so much on how important it is for both your health and performance to make sure you are properly fueled and your glycogen levels are full before the race. So i did my best to get my carb grubbing on last night (with the help of my mom’s home-made cinnamon bread..yum thanks mom). I am not great with eating a lot right before i run, and the my running nutrition book said it also worked just as well to have your breakfast right before you go to bed and then to have a very light snack that morning (which is what i did). There were also these terrible rumors that there might be RAIN in the morning ..eww i really didn’t want to run in the rain.

Sadly, I woke up bright and early at 6am to ..you guessed it..rain! I prayed and prayed that it would stop before the race started and thank God it did! It ended up being perfect running weather..not to warm and pretty dry. I got to the race about a 1/2 hour before start time and met up with my best friend and running buddy Olive Oyl who wasn’t running but had ran earlier that morning on the track and waited around to wish me good luck…thanks girl it meant so much to me!! Oh and by the way she is running the wine county 1/2 in Paso in March with me and is going to totally rock it!

Okay so now back to today. Right before the race started i made sure to empty my bladder and get the last minute stretching in and then we all lined up to start. It is always fun when you see familiar faces in the running mix and i looked over and say one of my childhood friends dad. We exchanged Hi’s and then proceeded to make sure our Garmin’s were up and running. Like I said before, this was a small production run and so there weren’t any time chips just good old fashion timer method.

The gun went off and so did I. There were only 233 people running so it didn’t take me too long to navigate my way to a comfortable spot. When i hit mile 1.5 I was running along side another guy and since we were both trying for about the same pace we decided to stick together. It really made the next 4 miles fly by as we chatted about previous races, the fact that this race was severely lacking hydration stations (only 2 on the route..ridiculous people), and kept each other on pace. Oh and this crazy guy is going to run marathon tomorrow..hell no would i even attempt to run more than 3 tomorrow!!

At about mile 5 my pace friend decided that he wanted to try and get under a 7:40 pace (we were currently running about a 7:46) so i cheered him on and told him to speed ahead. I ran about another mile and then my left foot started loosing feeling..like really bad! I kept praying that i would trip over it since i could hardly feel it. I was about a mile from the turn around point where i could get water and gu up. I was hoping that would help. luckily i ended up getting the feeling back into it before i reached the turn around.

I was counting how many girls were a head of me at this point and i had counted 5 so that motivated me to move faster! At the turn around I got some much needed water and tried to down as much of the gu packet with out losing too much time as possible. Side note – my drinking, breathing, chewing, swallowing coordination was pretty non-existent during this run! Oh and also the gu totally worked it’s magic and I felt really good for the next 3 miles and was able to keep my 7:45 pace. I didn’t run with a water belt (because i hate them with a passion) and i didn’t want to loose time going off the path for the water fountains so i was probably getting less water than i needed. Around mile 9 (and the last hydration station) i ate two gu chomps which helped get me through the rest of the race! The last mile was pretty brutal for me and the last .5 they made off the path and in the sand (no thank you) so it made me a little unsteady! I gunned it in the final .3 miles and finished at a 1:43 which was about a 7:53 average pace..which is what i was going for! I was really excited to realize that I have shaved off 37 minutes from Air Force 1/2 marathon :)

My wonderful mother braved the early morning and cold weather and was there at the finish cheering me on! We left shortly after i finished and headed off to a wonderful breakfast at Mimi’s cafe..so good! When i got home this afternoon one  of the guys that had ran the 1/2 too let me know via dailymile that he thought I had won my age group..What??? OMG i totally forgot about awards! I couldn't believe the brain fart! When we were there I was totally thinking there was some reason we shouldn’t leave right away but me actually placing never crossed my mind! I wasn’t sure if it was true (he could have thought my name was different) but when the final times were posted I was pleasantly surprised to see that I won my age group (25-29)!! I am really excited because i have been working on my speed a lot! I also found out that i get some added running bling for placing now i have to pick it up on monday due to my totally spacey brain!

When the final results were posted I found out that i placed 50th overall, the 6th female and 1st in my age group..yay!

Thank you all so much for your support! I am really excited for the next race a month from tomorrow!

Oh and remember when i said i saw my friends dad, well i had totally passed him at the turn around and he told me after that he was planning on running an 8:30 the whole race but when i passed him he couldn’t handle it and revved it up and was trying to catch me the rest of the way back ..but i still beat him :) it made me feel really good b/c he is super fit! haha :)

Have a great weekend!

P.S. here are some post-race pics (please excuse the nastiness, i just ran 13.1 miles)…

  

Thanks mom for coming out!!