Rock ‘n’ Roll
Savannah Marathon Recap
We flew out early Friday morning on 11/1, and if you remember that was quite a windy night, so, I was mostly just glad the flight left on time. Normally I would much prefer to have a day cushion when flying to a race, but I didn’t want to miss Halloween at home. Luckily the rain held off and the kids got to have a good Halloween, and we got out on time Friday morning. We landed in Savannah and got some food and then headed over to the race expo to grab our stuff. You could tell these Rock ‘n’ Roll folks know what they are doing, the expo was easy to navigate and well organized. They also made sure you walked through all the stuff they wanted to sell you before you got to any other booth. I think we escaped for just the price of a t-shirt.
We were lucky enough to have the generous hospitality of Ben’s parents who live in Savannah, so we spent the rest of friday catching up with them and enjoying some delicious food! We got to bed nice and early, and were lucky enough to be able to sleep in a bit race morning because we were only a short ferry ride to the start. I woke up, ate my usual pre race meal of Skratch Bar and some Munk’s Oatmeal, with coffee. I was glad to find that my UCANN drink didn’t freeze this time, and we were off to the race.
The starting area was well organized, and while the locals felt it was a bit chilly (50’s), I was pretty comfortable. The big thing at the start was to remember that there was also a ½ going on that day, so I had to make sure not to go out too hard and get stuck with them. I had changed my race plan from the last race and set out to simply keep my heart rate in a set zone for each section of the race. I felt that in Corning I may have worked a little too hard early on and that hurt me later. The plan was no matter what don’t make the same mistake. I also completely switched up my fueling plan. I switched from SIS gels to Huma gels due to the recommendation of a great friend (Hi Janna!! [this is my test to see if she reads the blog]). I also upped the amount of water I planned to drink, I felt really dehydrated by the end of Corning and didn’t want that to happen again.
I started off well, and fell right into a great heart rate. I set my watch to only show me the heart rate and disabled the auto-lap feature, so I wouldn’t be tempted to figure out my pace. I will admit I did have a bit of an idea what my pace was by seeing the pace groups around me, but I tried my best to just go by what the heart rate data was saying. I felt great for the whole race, and in the end had pretty even splits pace wise. However, the real congratulations for the day goes out to Ben who ran a 3:17.25, which was good enough for 3rd in his age group and 36th overall, and a huge PR for him!!
Next up it’s time to return to the ½ ironman distance next summer and fall! John, Ben and I have convinced Ashley to get into the triathlon game next year finishing it up with a 70.3! Now that running season is over bring on the snow! Time to ski!!