Apparently It Was Too Hot To Handle
Posted by David Hanenburg on 21 Jul 2008 at 7:19 pm | Tagged as: race reports
Last weekend I took on a local 15k race called Too Hot To Handle and apparently it was. The aid stations ran out of water and/or cups for the BOPers. I heard about this after the race as the race director issued an explanation/apology on their website. At least they stepped up and took some responsibility. Live and learn I guess. Hopefully nobody got seriously dehydrated or hurt as the conditions were hot and humid with zero wind. This is an experienced race organization so I am sure this will not happen again.
I added this race to one of my long runs for the weekend so after driving to the race site (White Rock Lake) nice and early I knocked out nearly 2 hours of my scheduled 3 hour run prior to the start. Running down at the lake with clear skies and a full moon is something special. I really enjoyed it. The race would be the icing on the cake.
My race strategy was to take the first miles very easy and then insert some tempo effort for the final 10k. To assist with throttling my effort at the start, I decided to position myself at the very back end of the 2500 racers.
Shortly after the start I ran into a friend that I hadn’t seen or talked to in a while and listened to his story of being t-boned by a car while biking to work. Scary stuff! Fortunately nothing extremely serious happened but various bones were broken. I was happy to see he is doing well and back out enjoying sport. We talked until the 5k mark and then I tried to push a tempo effort. The PE was there but my pace was 15-45 secs/mile slower. I stuck with this PE till the finish.
About 100 meters from the finish, I came up on 3 or 4 guys and told them I did not want to pass them in the remaining meters so I told them “Let’s push to the finish”. I ran right behind them giving words of encouragement as we finally passed through the finish chute. I crossed the line in 1:17:12 (23/80 in AG and 182 OA).
My three hour workout was complete! What a fun morning!
Complete race results can be seen here.
A special thanks to the RD and volunteers that help make these events happen!
Feel the BuzZ!
