Last weekend, a bunch of friends and I crammed into a couple vans and participated in the Texas Independence Relay. The 203.20 relay race started in Gonzales, Texas…
We ran throughout the beautiful Texas countryside… town to town…
I only managed to get two legs in before my IT band said no more. I’m pretty sure this injury was a result of the Austin marathon and over-training… I plan to switch to the bicycle for the next few weeks while I recover. Thankfully, my awesome team managed to pick up the rest of my legs. We eventually made it to the Houston downtown area…
In the end, we managed to get to the San Jacinto Monument in 24:59:10!
I believe we placed in the top 5, but I’m not sure. I’ll know when the final results are posted from the race. On the whole, I highly recommend anyone who wants to do a relay race to do the TIR, there’s no better way to explore the Texas country side.
I’m running the Texas Independence Relay again.
203.20 miles and 40 relay legs of running goodness…
This time I have the honor of being team captain and organizing the logistics of the race. After calculating our current leg times, I’m predicting that we will finish under 24 hours which is my goal. Last year the team finished just about 24 hours and we received 3rd place in the open mixed division.
My goal is to best that time from last year and hopefully finish in the top three again. I will take pictures and document the journey as much as I can!
Yesterday, I participcated in the Austin Marathon which happened to be on Valentine’s Day.
The weather was beautiful in the morning, albeit chilly for Austin. I had a great start, hitting the 5K mark at about 22:27 with the 3:10 pace group. I continued on and hit the 10 mile mark at 1:12:21 with the 3:10 pace group. Just before the half marathon mark, I had to take a pit stop due to some stomach issues and tried to catch up to the 3:10 pace group. The pit stop was longer than I wanted it to be as I ended up crossing the half marathon mark at about 1:35:46 which was slightly behind my goal pace. I kept trying to chase the 3:10 group but couldn’t catch it after my pit stop. I crossed the 20 mile mark at about 2:30:03 which in my definition, equates to dragging ass. I managed to finish the marathon in 3:21:50…
My goal was 3:10 but I obviously missed it this time around. My stomach never felt the same after the pit stop and I had trouble catching up. If I take any lessons from this race, it’s to avoid pit stops at all costs. It breaks your rhythm.
My next marathon will be the Chicago Marathon where I will run a sub 3:10 
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to run in the RunTex 20 Miler. All I can say is that it was freezing (for Austin) and I wasn’t ready for the cold…
I ended up finishing the race in roughly 2:29:30 which equates to about a 7:27/mi pace.
How did I feel? Pretty roughed up… my legs were fine but my stomach was in knots after the race. It didn’t help that when you finished the freezing race, there was nothing warm at the finish to consume. I mean, thanks for the bananas but I would have paid $20 for a cup of coffee at the point. My pace is still a bit slower than I want it to be. I should be running a 7:15/mi pace if I want to qualify for the Boston marathon this year when I run the Austin marathon in February.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to participate in the somewhat informal 1.1.Run in Austin. There’s no better way to start out the new year then heading out for a nice run to fight a hangover or post new year’s blues. Especially when it involves people running in their skivvies.
The route was interesting in that no one really knew what it was until the start of the race. The race started from Jack and Adams Bicycles and involved finding the shortest route to Rogue Equipment and back.
In the end, I believe I managed to finish in the top three. Thank you to Jack and Adams and Red Licorice for hosting the event. I recommend you do the same thing next year.
Here’s to a successful year of running in 2010!
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to hear Chris McDougall speak about his book, Born to Run at Rogue Running.
If you’re into running or thinking about starting to run, I highly recommend giving the book a read. The attitude of the Tarahumara people are interesting… they enjoy running and they don’t have cushy shoes like most people where. I mean, how can you resist this introduction…
In the hills of Mexico, a tribe of Indians carries an ancient secret: a diet and fitness regimen that has allowed them to outrun death and disease. We set out to discover how the rest of us can catch up…
While you’re reading, go pickup a pair of Vibram Five Fingers.
This morning, I participated in the Run for the Water 10 miler. I’m a fan of any race that has copious amounts of coffee available before I even get to the start line.
It was a bit foggy this morning, but it didn’t discourage the Austin running community from coming out and cramming into position at the start line. As a bonus to the American national anthem… we were presented with a rendition of the Burundi national anthem which was a nice touch.
I struggled up the hills and managed to finish in 1:09:47 which put me 10th in my age group. I’m not completely happy with my finish, I expected to at least run sub 7 miles, but hey, practice makes perfect. The course was difficult for your usual Austin race and I commend the organizers for making it challenging. You know, given that we were running down Pecos St and Scenic Dr, the organizers might as well offered an extension that went up Mount Bonnell given the amount of hills we ran.
On the whole, it was a great and challenging race. It also proved to me that I need to start doing more hill work. Next up is the very flat Rock n’ Roll San Antonio race.
Today, I participated in the LIVESTRONG Challenge 5K.
It was a beautiful Austin morning with the temperature floating around 60 degrees.
The start line was packed with roughly 3500 supporters and runners.
I ran the 5K in 18:02 which seemed like an awesome time but the course shorter than expected. It turned out the course was about 2.8 miles which is a tad short of a full 5K distance. Oh well, PRs for everyone!
In the end, it was great to see the city of Austin come together and support cancer research and cancer survivors. One can only hope that science and humanity’s persistence will prevail in the end.
For an obligatory Lance Armstrong quote to go along with the picture above…
If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them. When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or fight like hell.
I participated in the IBM Uptown Classic this morning.
It was a slow morning but I managed to inhale a Snickers Marathon Energy bar to solve that problem. Race packet food is the breakfast of champions!
The race started on time and I tried to sneak up front to get a better starting position.
The race went well, I was chasing a sub 40 but finished in 40:24 :/
My splits weren’t too bad either, I was feeling great after the first 5K
Total: 40:24 – 6:30/M
1st 5K Split: 19:04 – 6:21/M
2nd 5K Split: 21:19 – 6:38/M
To help celebrate, the race organizers even provided a bouncy castle!
As a bonus, I got to see my old office at IBM Austin which I left about 16 months ago.
Overall, great race, highly recommend it to anyone looking to do a 10K in Austin.
I managed to crawl out of bed today and participate in the Run Austin Run Half Marathon 2009.
The course turned out to be very difficult compared to what I’m used to running for half marathons. A lot of the terrain involved hills that I usually go out on the weekends to enjoy… on my bicycle. The race was significantly more challenging than the San Francisco Half Marathon I did a couple months ago. The temperature this morning was sitting at about 50 degrees fahrenheit which equates to perfect running temperature for me. Even though the course was difficult and there was some overcast skies… I managed to come out with a PR of 1:33:03 (6th in my age group)!
I do have some feedback for the race organizers though. I managed to finish the race in a respectable time only to come to witness the travesty of NO BREAKFAST TACOS and some of the booths being torn down…
No tacos? No precious sweet leaf tea? How could this happen?
The answer is simple… when organizing a race with a 5K, 10K and Half Marathon distances… stagger the start times appropriately so most people finish around the same time. Instead the race organizers thought that a 5 minute stagger time between each event was enough. No it’s not enough. What happened was the 5K and 10K’s pillaged all the breakfast tacos and sweat leaf tea.
On the bright side, since Austin is the live music capital of the world… there was fantastic live music at the finish line:
Overall… great race, tragic absence of breakfast tacos, coffee and tea at the finish line.
Great live music.
I hope to see the race put on again next year!
Next week is the IBM Uptown Classic 10K for me where I’ll be chasing sub 40s…
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