Breaking News: My Father Trims His Nose Hair.

When I woke up this morning, I said to myself, what the hell am I thinking running this race only two weeks after a 50k? Then I wondered why my cat looks particularly extra furry in the morning.

On the furry scale of 1-10, she's an 11.

I managed to snag a bib at the last minute and so with a bit of hesitation, I got my ass out of bed this morning and headed into the city to run this facocta race. Thank christ I have an office in the city. It offer alot of convenience for races in the city. And I dont have to piss in a bottle in the back of my car when I have to squirt.

On the warmup run from office to the Start I felt like poo poo. Just tired and in a "you should have stayed in bed numbnuts" kinda way.

Darcy's Dad (from whom I snagged the bib) predicted a two hour finish which had me lined up in Corral #9, which is where I ran into Sue from the RRC and Mike, a veteran Pickler. That friggen corral filled up real quick and after about 20 minutes of shooting the shit, they started moving us up to the starting line. I find these rolling starts at these big races very surreal, because essentially it's a brisk walk as they start to move everyone up to the line, and then it's a trot and then it's BAM - run! Oh, and for those who feel the need to sprint the 20 yard gap between to the actual start line, welcome to 2013! We use this crazy thing called chip timing! It's all the rage! You're individual time doesn't start until you actually cross the Start line. So need to run like an asshole before you get to the Start line, although odds are good that you're still an asshole. I am just keeping it real. And some times, keeping it real is a hard dose of reality. 

I have been doing these big races for a very long time. And what I have yet to figure out is the mentality that some runners have that causes them to line up in a corral that's clearly way above their goal time. I was passing "runners" in the first 2-3 miles that were barely running. And this was happening consistently throughout the course of the race, from start to finish. These people are the type of clowns that sit in the left lane doing 55. I can tell. Stupidity is not single threaded. If you are going to walk, fine. If you are going to line up in a corral for people that are faster than you, fine. But at least stay to the friggen right so you dont get trampled.

I kindly asked them to move to the right, and this is what I get

So the bottom line is that I was in a bit of discomfort through most of the race, which is fine because it's what I expected. I didnt come into this thing thinking I was going to set a PR. I've been feeling a little less than stellar since the 50k. This was a long run for me. My weekly mileage has been low. When you're not feeling it, you're not feeling it. And it's my friggen feet. They are killing me. Today, they were the first to go on me within the first five miles. I gotta admit I was running a little scared there for a while, no pun intended. The feet were killing me and my hamstring was of course throbbing with a consistently dull ache. I slapped some music on around mile 7 and it was like someone gave me a shot in the ass with adrenalin. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I could have run a marathon, but the music definitely got me through the last half of the race.

Do I really need to add a caption for this picture?

So for the remainder of the week I am going to lay low. The 20in24 is this weekend coming up. I have to run 33 miles in 24 hours. That's four laps at 8.34 miles a piece with about 5 hours in between laps. I might try to jump into a couple of spin classes this week so I can keep the fitness level up.

Proof that Darwin was wrong