Well, my first race of the year is over with and a good time was had by all. I traveled down to Birmingham, AL on Saturday to race on Sunday. I have heard great things about the race and Jill Edwards did a great job helping the pro's out with everything. She helped me get a room at the Sheraton hotel downtown, which was only 1.5 blocks from the start/finish line. That is always great to be able to leave your room at 6:35 and have plenty of time to warmup and start the race at 7. And it's also great to be able to walk straight to your room, put on some dry clothes and cooldown immediately following the race. The volunteers and police did a great job with everything, and the course overall was a little harder than I expected, but it is still a fast course.
Casey made the journey with me on Saturday. We made it in town with about an hour to spare for the Expo so I could pick up my packet. We then ventured out to find a place to eat. Once we were told there was nothing in walking distance, we just hopped into the car and drove a few miles down the highway to a Chili's which is always a great choice. After dinner, we had a relaxing evening and I was in bed by a decent hour.
I woke up to temps below 30 degrees (which wasn't in the forcast a few days before this) so I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked, but there wasn't any wind so it wasn't terrible. I raced for the first time in compression socks which actually kept me warm and also I believe that I'm not as sore as I usually am so I may start racing in them, as dorky as they are. I made it to the start with a few minutes to spare and at 7:03 we were off. The pace felt surprisingly slow at first, but I guess it was a marathon/half marathon start so there wouldn't be too many people taking off at sub-5 min. mile pace. The 1st mile mark as a little short and we went through in about 4:50. The next few miles were uneventful. I just stayed tucked into the pack that I was in (the 2nd pack on the road as 4 really fast guys were up the road) and maintained a nice tempo for these miles. I to about 4 -5 miles and realized how fast were were actually moving. We went through 5 miles around 26:30 and 6 miles right at 32:00 (take into consideration the short 1st mile). This pace was a little hot for me, but I wasn't too worried about it as I was working with the faster guys in front of me. Well, that is when they were able to maintain pace and I started to fall off. The next 2 miles were the hardest on the course so they managed to put a little time on me on the uphills and I managed to put a little distance on the guys behind me on the hills as well. The 9th mile was fairly flat and the 10th mile again was mostly uphill. I clicked off these miles around 5:40 pace and was hoping for a downhill finish for the last 3.1 miles. Well, that wasn't the case. The 11th was slightly downhill, the 12th, and most of the 13th miles were flat but straight into a headwind (the wind picked up as the temps went up throughout the day). I went through 11 miles just under 1 hr and then 12 miles in 1:05:26. I knew I had to cover 1.1 miles in 6:34 and that all I had to do was hold pace and I would be 10 - 15 seconds faster than that. Well I didn't think about that first mile that was a little short. They made up for that in the last mile. The 13th mile had a .25 mile uphill leading up to the 13 mile mark, and then two 90 degree turns in the last .1 of a mile. I hit 13 miles right at 1:11:30 and knew I had to get on my horse to get in under 1:12. Needless to say, that didn't happen. I picked up the pace, but all I could do was watch the clock tick to 1:12 as I was crossing the finish. It turns out, my finishing time was right at 1:12:00. And no I could not have gone faster because I used that "faster" speed to get in at 1:12:00, haha.
After the race, Casey found me, and we made our way back to the hotel. I did a short cooldown and we packed up and hit the road. They had some amazing BBQ for us, but considering it was 9am, we decided to hit the road and find a Panera on the way home. I am really happy about this early fitness and I know it is because of the hours that I have been putting in this year. I doubled the number of training hours that I put in in January from 2010 to 2011. When you make a large amount of training hours the norm, it doesn't really seem that bad, and it feels normal, who knew.
Thanks for reading. Up next, ITU US National Sprint Championships Tri in Clermont, FL.
Tony
