travels, races, and other musings

I'm getting slower How is it that I'm running slower and slower. Geesh. I did the Sunstroke Summer Stampede 5k tonight. This is my third race on this same course. My PR for the course is 35:42 (which prior to the Daisy 5k was my PR for any 5k). I guess it just wasn't my night. Tonight it was hot (around 95 - although there was a slight breeze and it wasn't too humid which helped), I'd worked a full day at work so perhaps that contributed. I don't have my official results from the chip, but my GPS said 38:49 which is a 12:29 minute mile. Yuck. I ran it up until mile 2 where there was a water stop. I walked the water stop and drank some water (drinking and running don't mix for me). After walking, I just couldn't pick it back up again and walked most of the last mile. Here are my splits according to my GPS: Mile 1 11:23 Mile 2 12:27 Mile 3 13:39 Last .1 mile 1:11 Official chip time: 38:47 12:26/mi Why am I getting slower? How come I could run...

Pre-Race My alarm didn't go off. I goofed and set it for 4:15 PM and not AM. Was it my subconscious telling me something? Perhaps I should have stayed in bed. Roger's alarm went off, luckily and we got up. I ate breakfast, showered, put on my outfit and we were on the road on time. We made good time getting to the race site, but about 3 miles from the site we were in a huge traffic jam of spectators and racers trying to get into the race site. Luckily we were 10 minutes early. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the parking lot for the race site until about 30 minutes after I wanted to be there. It took us nearly 40 minutes to get through the jam up. It was 6:40 when I jumped on the shuttle from the parking area to get to the race site. Transition was supposed to be closing at 6:45. There were tons of people in traffic behind us so there was so way they were starting on time. Roger and I were separated getting on the bus (athletes were given priority) and I rode over th...