ING Miami Weekend Recap

**Below is the note included on this Garmin Uploaded Profile of my run on Strands.com http://www.strands.com/RunPyles/posts/17997107

Race Articles: http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/story/1456584.html
Half Marathon Results: http://results.active.com/pages/searchform.jsp?rsID=89091

The half marathon was dominated by Team Strands, which took eight of the top nine men's places, led by Justin Young of Bloomington, Ind., in 1:05:57. The women's winner, Meghan Armstrong (1:17:50) also runs for the team that shares training tips on teamstrands.com, a sort of Facebook for athletes. The elite members of the network receive financial backing to train for the Olympics from Strands, a technology firm. -http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/recreation/fl-miami-marathon-lead-0201-20100131,0,310245.story

Friday: Went to the local airport 10am on Friday for 2 flights and to arrive in Miami around 3pm. Well the trip started rough when out first flight was delayed then canceled. After much waiting around we we're told that are new flight would leave Charleston at 3pm. So we went home and came back a few hours later to that flight being delayed as well. Things at this point weren't looking good. But luckily it was only a 30minute delay which still put us in Charlotte in time to catch the connector to Miami. But as we got to Charlotte we sat on the run way for close to 45minutes. When finally getting into the airport we sprinted across the airport. 10minutes of running to arrive at the gate with 2 minutes to spare but the doors closed. The lady let us on and said run! We did!! we got on the flight knowing we we're almost to Miami but then we sat on the runway for another 2 hours for de-icing. We finally arrived in Miami around 10:30 and got to the hotel around 11. I hadn't eaten anything but 2 bowls of oatmeal a longg time ago. So I paid the 15 dollars for a turkey sandwich/2 Gatorades ate it and we went to bed closer to 12

Saturday: We woke up around 6am feeling dehydrated and tired. But after some fluid we decided to get our shakeout runs out of the way not knowing what all to expect with plans for the day. We walked out to great conditions (a little windy but felt great). A local runner told us some places to explore and we took off for light runs. I ran for 43minutes looping around mostly water front running places and found a nice gated neighborhood that had a cool little running loop that had many runners and very tall trees/shade. We got stuck by a draw bridge while walking back to the hotel which was neat! We quickly got some breakfast in the hotel restaurant. After all this it was time for me to head over to work the expo. Kendra drove me to the convention center where I walked into the 2nd biggest expo I have personally seen (Chicago is by far the biggest, I’m sure Boston will blow that away this spring). I quickly got to meet @Mattdownin again. Mostly we just have talks on the phone so meeting him in person again was good! Soon @mwreneau was there as well and 6 of us was setting up and working the expo. I was quickly introduced to Arturo Barrios-The first man to break an Hour in the Half Marathon!! I got to meet Michael Sandrock who writes for the daily Camera in Boulder and wrote one of my favorite training books “Running Tough”. Sandrock was running the half barefooted to raise money for Haiti, he also his over the One World Running that collects used shoes to ship to those in need (http://oneworldrunning.blogspot.com/)! I worked the expo from around 10 to a little after two and was on my feet the whole time but thanks to the free pair of recovery socks that @cptdave777 had given to us, Dave Walters was another very nice guy. I left the expo with elite athlete coordinate Miguel who’s driving is a little scary but he got me back to the hotel safely around 3. Quick sandwich and lots of fluid plus a nap and I was back moving around for the 4:45 athlete meeting in the hotel lobby. This things can be sort of intimating but for me knowing I was running anything from just MP to even dropping back to pace Marian I wasn’t too anxious but I could sense Marian was not use to this stuff. The meeting was fairly long but by 6:30 it was time for dinner. Very good past/bread for me, I just want to say @joshglaab plate of food and then 2nd plate of food was the note of the day…the guy was shoveling it in, but it’s much needed running as much and as fast as he does!! Hearing @Elva share some stories made for a great dinner. Around 8:30 we went back to the room to get ready to go to bed. By 9:30 we we’re out!

Sunday: The alarm was set for 2:45 but the safely lock box in the room wanted us up at 2am! The things started going crazy out of nowhere and we couldn’t get it to stop so we laid for 45minutes of beep…beep beep…beep beep beep over and over! 3am we went to the lobby for breakfast which ended up not opening until 3:30. Coffee(only workouts and long runs for me these days) and bagels. By 4:45 we headed back to the lobby to walk with the group to the staging areas. I got to talk with @michaelaish who shared lots of Marathon training advice with me to use for Boston. Very nice guy who has ran in the Olympics so the advice was very nice of him to share with us. The warmup and staging area was the Miami Heat’s arena. But trust me the area we went to is not where D-Wade prepares before games. ONE toilet for about 15 or so guys! Warm up was not needed to warm up it was already 70’s and horrible humidity by 5am. I shuffled around for 15minutes thinking even running Marathon Pace would be rough today. After a while we were in the start area listening to the national anthem and Ryan Hall who was in town gave a quick talk to all runners. Chatted with Micheal Wardian who was running the full(probably his 50th straight weekend of Marathon or longer races)

ING Half Marathon: Well hot/humid from the get-go! I was sweaty crazy amounts by mile 1. That happens when you leave under 20’s and then run in over 70’s and humidity over 90%. But to my surprise (long travels, little sleep for me, on feet at expo, little amounts of food/fluid then needed, etc, etc) my legs felt ok. The plan was simple if I could run my April 19th Goal Marathon Pace of 5:30 I would be more then happy even if it was hard to do. Through 5 it was very easy but feet were burning (sockless racing in Musha equals no-no!). By 10miles I still felt really smooth and honestly easy like it should feel like when I’m fit which I’m not right now but I did see I’m strong from base. I passed the last few runners around mile 11 and then had no one in front of me(that I could see). Looked at the watch and saw 5:28 avg so sub 1:12 for a MP workout in hot conditions! I was happy knowing things haven’t been smooth lately with the workouts I have done. I feel like I have been easy base miles for 10 weeks now! I could have kicked in really hard had I been racing but instead with the feet burning and blood being seen coming through my shoes I figured I’m perfect right now so just finish like this. That actually turned into slowly somewhat as I lost my goal focus and it felt more like just running. Got to 13.1 (by the Garmin) and still had to continue running! So yes I messed up. So in the end I wanted to run 1:12(5:30) my watch showed 5:28-29 but I didn’t think about it being off which I should have known it can be and will be if not running the tangents. So I finished slower then I thought I was on pace for which I’m kicking myself about. I should have known and not lost focus the last 2 miles. I would rather look back and see 1:11.59 for this even though it was just a long/hard workout effort. But anyways here is the stats 1:12.38 for 8th place(6 of top 7 was Team Strands runners) there was 11,257 finishers in the half which makes this by far the largest half marathon I have ever ran in which is cool. Looking at times a head of me makes me feel pretty good that I felt good running this workout, lots of guys that really went for it had rough races. So I’m lucky this was just a hard workout and not a race or I’m sure things might have not gone so smooth for me. (http://results.active.com/pages/searchform.jsp?rsID=89091)

After Race: it was a rush to get out of Miami for early return flight. Long story short since this is a long journal. 10+ hours in airports or in the air and lot’s of junk food (the day to do it). I feel very blessed to have this trip and to get to experience it was Marian and meet great people. Very thankful to God every day for running and all the great places it has taken me and all the great people I have met through it all

The Plan: After a week to regroup and recovery (mostly from travel/lack of sleep) I will have 10 weeks to start hitting the training hard! Not just miles but solid workouts now. I want to run a half marathon tuneup in 4-6 weeks and really go for a big one. Something 1:07-8ish would be the goal so around my PR time. The focus is Boston Marathon but a good hard half is still needed in my book before hand.