Geez, what a morning for

Geez, what a morning for a race. Rain, rain, and more rain. When I got home, I had to strip at the doorway; otherwise I’d have left a trail of water across my apartment.
One of the reasons I like the 10-Miler is because it’s so close — it takes me less than 10 minutes to drive there, so I can sleep “late” and still be fine. When my alarm went off at 5:50 though, the first thing I heard was the pitter-patter of raindrops. I groaned. While running in the rain is better, in my opinion, than running in the hot sun, steady rain ain’t so great.
Fortunately the rain abated for a bit as I drove to the race site, picked up my packet, and met Debbie. Together, we were Team Crackle, Pop, but Please No Snap — we each did 5 miles. I also started to see a bunch of my running friends. First up was Vic, who I caught up to and laughingly asked “so did the weatherman predict this?” since I knew he’d been obsessively checking the weather all week. Debbie and I also found Michelle, Kyle and Heidi (the latter were also doing the relay), and I also got to chat with Jessica.
The race started only a couple minutes late. I’d told Debbie yesterday that she could expect one of three time ranges from me depending on what kind of day I was having: good day would be 53-55 minutes, normal day would be 55-58, and bad day would be an hour or more. Since I haven’t run 5 miles in a while, my actual goal was 55:00 — 11:00 miles. I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I thought I had a shot.
Mile 1 passed uneventfully. Some drizzle, and tons of puddles, but ok. I entertained myself by listening to the people around me. I felt like I might’ve been going ever-so-slightly faster than planned, and that was confirmed when I passed the mile marker in 10:34. I stopped there for a minute-long walk break and just as I started running again, Cassie came up behind me. We ran the second mile together and chatted a little. As we stopped for a drink at the water station just past the mile 2 marker, who should come running up behind us but Jon! The three of us ran together for a bit and then Cassie pulled away, but I stuck with Jon for the rest of my five miles.
Unless you count the marathon (when Jon and I didn’t know each other, but he heard people cheering for me the whole way thanks to the sign on my chest), I’ve never actually run a race with Jon — he’s usually a couple minutes ahead of me. But with him taking it easy today after running Ten for Texas yesterday, I was able to keep up. It was really nice to get to chat with him, and have him pull me along. I didn’t tell him, but he helped me overcome my brain telling me I needed walking breaks! I only walked a total of about 2 minutes the entire race, which is something I really needed mentally. The only real complaint I have is that the mile 4 water station had no water. That was definitely not cool, and left me feeling thirsty for the last half of my 5 milers.
Jon also directly helped me have a good day. He tried his best to power ahead of me in mile 5, and I tried my best to let him. But he wouldn’t have any of it — he told me I could finish under 55:00 minutes, and to keep up. So I gritted my teeth and did as told, and….
Mile 1 – 10:34.2
Mile 2 – 11:15.1
Mile 3 – 11:25.9
Mile 4 – 11:12.3
Mile 5 – 10:32.1
Total – 54:59.6!
HECK YEAH. I beat my 55:00 goal by 0.4 seconds, baby! Thanks Jon! The official results show me at 55:25.7 gun time with a differential of 27.1, which puts me at 54:58.6 — a whole additional second of breathing room under my goal time. 😉
I hopped in Debbie’s car (after making a bad decision on what route to take to get there and ending up with my shoes covered in mud) and drove back to the start line to wait for her and cheer on all my friends. At one point, I was talking to Pony, who’d just finished a kick-butt race, and she said “is the sky getting darker or am I about to pass out??” Fortunately, it was the sky! As I looked across the parking lot, I saw just a sheet of water coming our way — we managed to sneak under the Striders tent just in time to avoid getting completely drenched (as if we weren’t drenched already).
I felt sorry for poor Debbie and all the other runners stuck in the downpour, but I was patting myself on the back for choosing the first relay leg. 😉 Debbie didn’t mind too much, and a few minutes later, with the rain having let up a bit, she came roaring across the finish line like a woman posessed! She did her 5 miles in 50:55.5.
Team Crackle, Pop, but Please No Snap total time: 1:46:21.2 — good enough for 2nd place in the Female Relay division! Woohoo! (Though that is the gun time. They never took out the 27.1 seconds of chip differential, so our actual time was 1:45:54.) Debbie and I each got a cool wooden plaque with a space station mission patch on it (since it was the Space City 10-Miler sponsored by USA).
This race report is getting long, and I still haven’t mentioned how awesome it was to see all the other bloggers come down to my side of town for the race. In addition to the ones I’ve already mentioned, I got to see June, Joe, Steve, Bill, and Edwin, each of whom had a good race in tough conditions. I also got to meet a couple more Striders that I hadn’t met before, so that was nice. I think that’s everyone…hope I didn’t forget anyone.
All in all, a good race despite the nasty conditions.