Well, I took off yesterday to rest my left knee. In the afternoon I helped Matthew and Beth purchase a couch and love seat at IKEA. Katie and they did all the heavy lifting. I could still feel my knee when I went to bed. Today I woke at 5 AM, and left the house at 6 AM. It only took about 20 minutes to get to the Travis County Exposition Center. Once there I just rested in the car. No warm-up. I wasn’t going to chance it. After listening to a podcast for about an hour I found my friends (actually they found me), and we waited for the start at 8 AM. Afterwards they were ahead of me. I felt bad because I couldn’t keep up with them. Running carefully I was worried that the knee would stiffen up. I was compensating trying to not stress my left side, but soon I felt that my right side was tightening up. So I just tried to run slow, steady, and evenly. After a while the tightness went away. I knew left knee was there, but it was not painful which was a relief. Soon I caught up to Celeste around mile 5, and on the first big hill she began to walk and I went on ahead. Then I caught up to Glenn shortly afterwards. He had a tough night and wasn’t feeling well. His stomach was upset. Together we passed Chris at a water stop at mile 6. Then slowly Glenn fell behind and I went on by myself. The miles passed and so did the big hills. On the final few miles on flats I just kept going. When we got back to the Expo I was really starting to breathe hard. On the last few tenths of a mile I looked down at my watch it said 1:59:07. I could see the finish. So I pushed as hard as I could and finished in 1:59:37. I was totally spent.
Mile Time Total
01 09:45.75 0:09:45.75
02 09:35.41 0:19:21.16
03 09:30.25 0:28:51.41
04 09:40.75 0:38:32.16
05 10:14.09 0:48:46.25
06 10:11.64 0:58:57.89
07 10:15.24 1:09:13
08 09:50.72 1:19:03
09 09:11.55 1:28:15
10 09:40.73 1:37:56
11 09:05.51 1:47:01
12 08:45.01 1:55:46
20K 03:52.95 1:59:39
