Well, I have spent the last 24 hours trying to re-establish most of my previous blog posts to no avail. I accidentally checked "all" button on my post delet page..grrr...I have found them in google reader but don't know how to re-post them. If anyone knows how to, please let me know!
I will move on now...hey it is 2012!! We are spending the day at home today..I am so sore! Yesterday we got up and put our race outfits on, including the race shirts they gave us at registration. Off we went to the race venue. It was about a 2 mile walk to the "Obelisk" in one of the main parts of BA.
They closed a whole street!
When we arrived, there was a sea of aqua shirts all around us. It was an amazing site as we all crowded around the announcer's stage at the starting line. 2,750 of us to be exact.. There was a guy leading a "warm-up" for the masses, nubile young women who danced to high energy music as the excitement of the race built...H nd I had chills as we heard the Argentinian National anthem.
It was probably one of the most exciting race starts I have ever witnessed! After much dancing, screaming, singing and general amazing excitement from the crowd-cinco, quatro, tres, dos, UNO-bang!
We were off!!
H and I started the race together. As we came up to kilometer "uno", I glanced at my watch and we were at exactly 6 minutes, our goal was to maintain that pace for the whole 5 miles of the race..we remarked how easy it felt to run at that point anyway....the course was pretty crowded throughout the race, we had to dodge people, grates in the road and trash. The water they handed out was in plastic bottles so lots of crunching of plastic was going on. I noticed with interest that no one was talking, these Argetines were very serious runners. They looked like very competitive racers-this only served to motivate me to run faster!! At k3 we were still keeping the pace. The sites around us were amazing and I had my camera but was too excited to race to take pictures. I noted to myself that I was glad we had reconned the course and taken pictures the day before. I started to feel the heat of the day-first just a bit then as the race went on, sweat started to drip from me. It was the hottest day of our stay here in B.A. It was easily in the 90s by race time, which was by the way at 4:00 PM, the hottest part of the day! As we rounded a corner to about 4k, H said he was stopping for a gel and for me to keep running. We had taken our own handheld water bottles, which I was really glad for because at each water station was a log jam of runners and if I were to stop, it would take forever to keep going. I continued on, without my running partner and tried to pick up my pace. It got hotter, and hotter and hotter! I saw people starting to wilt around me. Some had even started walking. I did slow my pace in the race once to grab a sponge off the ground to douse my head and another to try and get water at an aid station to throw over my head to cool off. It took me walking past 3 tables to get water finally....it took me awhile to get going again. At one point I thought I may have to walk, i was so overheated but I PUSHED myself, thinking you can do this..come-on! I passed a woman that looked around my age. Could I be running to place in my AG? Finally, finally, I saw the 7k sign and looked at my watch-42 minutes-I was right on track to finish in 6 minute k's, my goal. I think I was mumbling profanities at this point but no one understood my English at this point.
I saw the finish line and tried to sprint but I had literally nothing left to give and crossed the finish line in an undramatic fashion along with hundreds of others. I was done!! Pushed my stop button and 48 minutes-yay!!
I felt bad for ditching H but he was not far behind me:
At long last we were done!! It seemed like a lot longer than 5 miles to me, but I did it!
Wow! We wondered around the finish line for awhile sucking down Gator-ade..I was drenched with sweat, as was H. It brought back memories of Ironman Western Australia, the heat was almost unbearable! There were vendors at the finish line so I bought myself some socks as a race reward. I had momentary visions of placing in my AG. We hung around the awards ceremony but since it was all in Spansh, we gave up after awhile.
When I checked the race results, I was glad we had not stayed. I think 33 women in my AG..it is hard to tell exactly how many were in the F55-59 category. I ranked 1661 out of 2757 (and many DNFs or DNS) runners, 297 out of 818 women and 10th in my AG..not bad for an old lady! We saw one who had collapsed at the end and a few ambulances..I think heat was a main factor..
We rounded out our New Year's Eve by dinner at a pizza cafe near our casa. It was the best pizza I ever tasted!! There was no one on the streets at 11:00 PM- here the local "Portenas" celebrate the NY at home with family or as one local told us, "getting drunk and going to several friends' houses". We opted for a toast at midnight watching fireworks on TV and watching the ball drop in New York at 2:00 AM Argentian time.
I slept like rock and now it is 2012.. I wonder what the new year will bring!
Some pics of the sites we saw along the race course:
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