i woke up before my alarm clock went off this morning. 3:55! i was wide awake, so i got up and got around. i needed to leave by 4:35 to meet up with bryan j in wellington. bryan invited me earlier in the week to go with him to wichita to run with the WSW (west side wackos!) and then take in the grand opening of go run wichita.
i got out the door a little earlier than planned and made it to our meet up point about 4:45. bryan showed up around 5:05 and we headed up the turnpike to wichita.
traffic was light, so we made it to go run by 5:45. no one else was there, so we stretched and talked for a bit. i offered bryan some of my ford ironman prize ultra protein peanut butter crunch granola. he took a pack and i opened my own and downed it. (pay attention! that granola will come up again later.)
about five minutes later, amy showed up. she stepped out of her vehicle, looked at me and said, "you're mike, aren't you?" the first of many dailymile connections this morning! i met jason, patrick, zach, jeremiah, winston and probably someone else i'm forgetting. i also saw karla. it had been months since our cycling meet up, but it was good to see her again.
just after 6:00, our planned start time, we headed south on maize road toward 21st street. i ran along easily with the front group, chatting with those nearest me. we hit the intersection and turned east on 21st street.
for quite some time i felt great and kept up with the group. then ever so slowly i started dropping toward the back of the pack. finally, i was spit out. i did my best to keep the group in sight and somehow managed to do so until ridge road where they'd stopped to pick up stragglers. (that would be straggler. i was me.)
i hit the group and stopped for about ten seconds before they started up again. i could have used a bit more of a break, but i'm not complaining. i came to run. soon the group was dropping me again. i couldn't keep up their pace. karla stayed back with me and we ran a shorter route than the rest of them.
karla was a godsend. she had a garmin which helped me know where i was as far as mileage. her first report gave me a little hope. i was at a better pace than i imagined. don't remember exactly what it was, but it was okay.
we ran north on ridge to 29th street and turned back west. we hit mile five and i finally had enough light to see my stopwatch. i was at 45 minutes. i got excited. with just a little push, i could beat the skinny kid! i said something to karla and then stupidly started sprinting. (sprinting is a relative term. i would have laughed at this being called a sprint when i was in high school. today, i call it a sprint and tell those who laugh to shut up!)
i ran that pace for about a quarter mile, maybe two quarters. (i could to reduce that fraction to 1/2, but two quarters sounds better right now.) at the end of my stupid sprint, i began to feel nauseous. i slowed drastically and suddenly found myself heaving. remember the granola? i told you'd it'd come up again. literally! yuck!
for a while we ran fairly slowly until i was feeling better. we picked up the pace as we turned south again on maize road. running faster was a bad idea. i started feeling nasty again. i puked again, this time without stopping. not sure the total number of up chucks, but it was somewhere around four or five. i think that's the number of times i apologized to my incredibly patient friend, karla. by the way, peanut butter granola isn't as unpleasant the second time around as some foods. it is survivable. just thought you might want to know that bit of trivia for future reference.
anyway, we ran by go run and to the 10K mark where my watch was stopped at 55'10", my second best time at that distance. a little off the skinny kid's pace, but next week i'm going to get him. he's going down even if i have to puke again.
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