Well....I've done it again...signed up for another round of Ironman training. I sucumbed to a little bit of peer pressure and a little bit of "feeling left out" during Thanksgiving weekend and I signed up for Ironman Louisville. It has the potential to be hot...very very hot. The race is August 30th....pretty much the end of the hottest part of the year.
Since my last post I've competed in the Half Ironman National Championships in Las Vegas which were great but I was very happy to cross that finish line and end a very long season. I took some time off and then around the holidays I started training for the ING Atlanta Marathon. I wanted to set a new PR of at least 4:30. Kathleen Siler and I trained for this race together which was great. We ran circles around the Vandy track on a weekly basis doing speed work to get faster and faster. As painful as those workouts wer it is amazing how effective they are. We used the Tom King Half Marathon as a training run and added 4 miles onto the front so we could knock out our 17 mile training run. It rained....no...poured...and it was FREEZING! Lisa King and Julie Koh were also training for ING and were going to do the half marathon.
The Atlanta Marathon was on March 29th so we caravaned down to Atlanta the day before. We stayed at The Omni Hotel which was the host hotel. It was a perfect location since the start line was just out the front doors. On Saturday we all went to the expo and did the normal pre-race routine. Lisa was staying with her dad that night so Julie, Kathleen, and I went out in search of a good Italian restaurant. The Omni suggested Il Localina which was 2 miles away. We jumped in a cab since it was so close....so we thought. $20 cab ride later we are much further than 2 miles away and have been dropped off on this hidden residential street where the restaurant was located. The food was fantastic and the restaurant was great...a hole in the wall...always good! We had an issue getting back to the hotel since this street wasn't a normal route for cabs to pick people up so flagging a cab down was not an option. After calling a few times we finally got a cab and we were headed back to the hotel.
Race morning was pretty business as usual except the great thing was that we could stay in our room until about 6:55 since we were right outside the start line....the race started at 7:05!! I like staying at the host hotel! We knew going in that Atlanta was going to be hilly...we had no idea it would be as hilly as it ended up being. Kathleen and I had trained in Percy Warner Park and we had done our speed workouts so we were on track to do a 4 hour marathon. We were on pace for that until mile 18 when I just couldn't hold it anymore. There were way too many hills and my legs were toast. The hills were long....very very long. Kathleen went ahead because she felt better than I did. I just walked, shuffled, ran my way to the end and finished in exactly 4:30. Not the 4 hours I was trained to do but 4:30 was what I wanted! Kathleen did awesome and finished in 4:12. Julie and Lisa also did great on their half marathon.
This was my 8th marathon (if you count the one in Lake Placid)....and I think it will be my last. The only way I'll do another marathon is if they are in Ironman races or if i'm somewhere really cool like Hawaii. If you are going to be miserable you might as have a great place to recover afterwards...the beaches of Honolulu sound good to me!
Now that Atlanta is over I look forward to my next big race which will be Gulf Coast Half Ironman. I'm excited about going back down to do this race again. I rode my bike yesterday for the first time since October and it went surprisingly well. Now I just have to keep that enthusiasm up for the next 22 weeks until Ironman Louisville...no problem!
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