Thanks for the email and the Facebook posts! I missed being able to call you guys to share in the excitement right after the race, so think God for things like Facebook! Thought I'd take a moment to recap the experience briefly.
We couldn't have asked for better conditions on Sunday morning: overcast with even a bit of a drizzle. Yet, for whatever reason, this was a really tough race for me. I was super pumped at the beginning, and even got a full night of sleep the night before. But somewhere around mile five, my mental energy just left me, and I could not shake it off. I kept waiting for the euphoria to kick in; it never did. And so the finish was *hard*. I had a great plan to gradually increase my speed in the last 5K so that I would finish the last mile at just under a 10 minute mile pace. That did not happen. Whether my legs actually felt like lead or I just thought they did, it took everything in me to finish hard. The only thing that kept me going at that point was looking down at my watch and thinking, "oh hell no! There is no way I'm going to finish with a 16 at the end of my time!" So I found an afterburner and somehow kicked it in. My official final time was 2:15:31. Jason finished 20 seconds ahead of me.
In hindsight, I think the mental issues may have been because I forgot to have fun! We were so focused on maintaining our pace, not going too fast, finishing in the time that we wanted to, that we forgot to look around and take in our surroundings and just have fun with it. I couldn't tell you what we saw on Hawthorne or what the houses in Laurelhurst looked like. I was super happy at the end once we crossed and it was a great event overall, though. And today I'm feeling great! Very little muscle or joint soreness, so that's a good thing! I'm all ready figuring out when my next one will be!
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