so-
Thanks to the TAF travel fund, I got a room at the Hyatt, only about half a mile from the start line. That was a very good idea. I got up at around 5:00 (as opposed to like 3:45 last year) and had a leisurely ProBar and coffee breakfast. Then I lubed up my boy parts and headed out the door. I finally found the Elite Development tent and dropped off my stuff and it was about time to go. I ran into Tim Surface at the line, and started with him and a few other folks I kind of knew. It kind of kept the nerves at bay. So the gun sounded and we took off. Hope Solo had a head start and held us off for nearly a quarter mile. after a while we formed our little sort-of-elite pack with the lead women, and were clicking off 5:15-5:18 from the gun. Unfortunately our actual pacer took off like a maniac, and the guys that went with him all died a horrible death later. We were solid through the half, feeling like I was out for a nice tempo run, and right on pace at 1:09:2something. At around 15 the lead female (Liliya Shobukhova) picked it up a little, and we all went along. Everything is still going great here. at about 20 I realized we were still under pace and I was still feeling fine. THIS IS GREAT. at about 22 I was started to feel crappy, but it wasn't really a problem. At 23 I hit the wall hard. Suddenly my legs were heavy and I couldn't see straight. I kept blinking and shaking my head. I felt like I had been in a centrifuge. I was crying out from within "don't do it!" "you're too close" but shortly thereafter I accepted my fate. My body had given up even though I had told it not to. Other bodily functions to a backseat to maintaining consciousness, as I weaved down the street. For some reason, in the last half mile, I couldn't hear anything. I got to the line in 2:21:50. Roughly on 2:19 pace for 24 miles. At the finish I stood ghost faced (I saw the pictures) and defeated. The medical personnel kept asking me if I was ok. I kept trying to tell them I was as fine as you could be or something more smart-assy, but I could only get out the first word of a sentence I had put together in my mind "yeah, yeah, yeah" I kept saying over and over. I got a little scared, but a minute or so after the finish I was at least with it again. By the time I got out of the finish chute (the thing is at least half a mile long) I was pretty much ok.
So where do we go from here?
I guess the plan is to get a sub 65 half in ASAP. As it stands, 8 days later, I'm pretty much back to normal training. It's hard to get over being that close and losing it, and then finishing 3 minutes of pace, but luckily as a true American, I have a very short memory and a desire to go out and make my dreams come true - no matter how pointless they are. This is kind of depressing, but seriously, the race sucked and I'm not going to force myself to look on the bright side. I'm going to go out and try to rip a fast half and forget about it. You're only as good (or bad) as your last race.
