I Listened to Coach

This past weekend was a lot of fun. Before heading to San Antonio with Jon Walk we helped out at Ten for Texas working the aid station at mile 8. We had a great crew with Karen and her daughter Emma, Holden, Debbie Tripp, Jon, Waverly and her friend Natalia. It’s been a long time since I’ve helped at an aid station. It was great fun and we were able to see, support and cheer for our friends.

Jon and I we’re off to San Antonio shortly after the race. After checking into the hotel we made the ¾ mile walk to the expo. We picked up our numbers. Having signed up the first day the event was announced we had special bib numbers and our own pick up area with no line. We cruised the expo seeing many friends. We hung out with Jay and Joy Hilscher for a while at their Texas Independence Relay booth. We spent some time with Steve and Paula Boone of the 50 States Running Club which is always fun. Their world of collecting marathons is so much different than most of us, and very cool.

We made our way from the Alamodome to the river walk. After a couple wrong turns we found our destination, the Hard Rock Café. Many from WoodlandsFit and The Woodlands Running Club were meeting there for dinner. Our reservations worked perfectly and we had a group of about 30 on the patio for a relaxing evening.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel. Organized gear for the morning and were off to sleep.

We were up at 4am having planned to leave for the shuttles at 5:15. With a 33 degree morning we weighed the option of catching the shuttle a little later, around 6am. Debbie Tripp called and we suggested we meet in the lobby a few minutes before 6. This might not be smart as 30,000 people were probably thinking the same thing and getting to a race start late is not one of the things I like to do.

Our plan changed one more time as we had an offer from honorary TWRC member and Houston Harrier Russell Meyer to drive us to the start. After driving through one barricade, one u-turn and reviewing the local road map a couple times we parked 50 feet from the start an hour early.

We watched as the corral volunteers got their final instructions. We were front row for Governor Perry’s arrival and interview with a local television crew.

About 7:10 I headed to corral 15 where I planned to be for anyone who needed any last minute advice. I saw a few people but with what became an overloaded shuttle system most of the participants were arriving later than expected and heading right for their corrals. I saw good friend and super coach Miranda Mallet and her crew from Clearlake TNT. She's said she has a TIR team this year so there will be a couple Throwdowns going on.

The event did start about 15 minutes late due to the shuttle system being overwhelmed. The start was a wave format. There were about 1000 participants in each corral and about 2 minutes between coral starts. With 32 corrals Sean Wade was about 4 minutes from finishing as the last corral was starting.

I’ll be posting the results from our WoodlandsFit and TWRC runners who all did well. With so many I’m still going through the results.

So what did I do?

Last year I had planned on this being a comeback event. Hurting my knee the week before Hurricane Ike was a really big set back. At the USA 10 miler it was all I could do to walk across the parking lot from the club tent to see the start and stepping off a curb was almost impossible.

While I have been improving a lot over the last few weeks I haven’t done more than a couple miles in one stretch and still come up a little gimpy for couple days after.

So…I’m on the starting line at San Antonio Rock-n-Roll with a bib and with Coach Kim's words ringing in my ears from Tuesday track saying “ don’t even think about doing the race”

The irrational thoughts keep running through my brain like “I finished my first 100 miler covering the last 15 miles feeling worse than what my knee feels like now. Even though I have no quality training the last 8 weeks I certainly can gut out 13.1 miles. I have all day to do it.” …..and many other little not smart thoughts.

I listened to Kim. While I didn’t say anything to anyone about my real plans I started with a few of our WoodlandsFit walkers as corral 30 passed by me. I hung with them for about a ½ mile and then stopped and let them go. After stretching some I shuffled along the course (without my bib number on) for about 3 miles and then walked back to the Alamodome to cheer in and wait for our runners. The reward is that now I’m not beat up and can continue to train for better days.

The finish area was really tough to see anyone and I missed just about everyone. I saw Bill Crews running very strong at the 26 mile mark in route to a big time PR of 3:33:34.

I hung around the reunion area and finally hooked up with a few from our group. I saw Misty, Special K, Molly, Debbie, Jon and Najat finish. Everyone looked good finishing. Debbie looked like she could go another 10 miles.

After everyone was in Jon and I headed back home stopping in Columbus for dinner. We got a call from one of our club members that there was a wreck on I-10 and that traffic was backed up. After a quick call to Waverly for Google map directions we were able to pick around it on some back roads and ended up on the TIR route….and relived the spot that Jon passed me last year near Wallis.

It was a great weekend with great friends. The City of San Antonio and Elite Racing did a really good job with the first time mega event.