I qualified for Comrades at the NYC marathon in November but my time put me in a corral that is minutes from the starting line in a race where every second counts. So, I decided to “stop by” the Salt Lake City marathon to break 4 hours and qualify for a better corral down in Durban. Easy enough, training is going well, the course is net down hill and the website bills the race as a “fast track.” Not leaving anything to chance I loaded my playlist with exactly 4 hours of music and figured all I had to do is hit play at the start and finish before the music stops. Best laid plans of mice and men…
About a half hour in I started hearing tunes I had deleted the night before, the ones removed to get the total play time under the cut off. Apparently I had two copies of the “SLC Victory” playlist, the one I was listening to and the right one. Argh…
Then I noticed we were running up and down. Not flat like expected, but up and down. Not much mind you, but enough, especially at 4K feet above sea level. Where I live. Oh, sure they don’t dwell on the altitude when you sign up, why bother? I mean how bad can it be? What’s a few thousand feet between expectations and reality?
So all of that is going on and then I notice that for the life of me I couldn’t find any mile markers. I had no idea where I was most of the time. The big markers where there, like half way, but the in-betweens were nowhere to be found. So there I was cruising along thinking I was holding a nine minute pace but I didn’t know if I was holding a nine minute pace. It might have be en 9:05, or 9:07, or god forbid 9:10. Man-o-man first I am listening to the Goo Goo Dolls way too early, then I can’t find a flat stretch to save my life and now I am running for time without a clock. I start to unwind…
I set my intentions to run 3:59:59 but the running gods would have none of it today. How cruel they can be at times. I did run within 14 seconds of 3:59:59 except that I landed on the wrong side. The music stopped. And I crossed the line in silence at 4:00:13.
Full confession, I shed a tear or two. Downside is that after so much effort I am still stuck in the G corral at Comrades. Upside is I ran within 14 seconds of my goal with no way to monitor and assess pacing along the way. I ran solely by feel, instinct and experience.
14 seconds. Over 26.2 miles. That is the power of intention…
Onward->
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