always pee before a race

On Saturday I ran the Parkway half marathon, which is run along the American River parkway in Sacramento. The parkway runs for 32 miles along the south side of the American River. Beautiful views, a nice paved course for runners and bikers. But it is not wide enough for a race of nearly 3000 people. Also, the park where it starts is fairly small without nearly enough parking for the four races that were held (half marathons for runners and a separate one for walkers, a 5k, and a kids run.) So I parked in the nearby neighborhood, and some people parked at a local high school and rode buses in.

I underestimated the amount of traffic and the difficulty finding a parking space, so I made it to the park only 10 minutes before the race was to start. I saw the huge lines for the porta potties and realized that there wasn't time for my usual prerace bathroom trip. I thought that I would be OK without one. Then once I squeezed into the crowd at the spot for my expected race pace (better races ask people to line up based on their pace or expected finish time, so that slower runners are toward the back.) Just before race time, the race director announces that the last bus is running late and it will be just a little bit before we start. Well, 20 minutes later we're still packed like sardines and my bladder is really complaining. For some reason the race has a local bagpipe and drum group start the race by marching through the runners while playing. I've always like bagpipe music, but it seemed a little strange. So we finally start to run - well, walk at first because of the crowd.

Within a quarter mile I realize that there is no way that I can run 13.1 miles without emptying my bladder. So I find the first bathroom that I can, get out of the race, stand in line (making a runner stand still while other runners are going my makes us really crabby), and finally go and get back in the race. By then I'm way behind my expected pace and am among slower runners. So I've weaving and dodging around people, trying to speed up. My first mile took over 10 minutes with the bathroom break, so I decide to speed up the next few miles to catch up. That was a mistake! I hadn't really trained well for this race. The weather didn't help - April had more than twice the average monthly rainfall and I missed a few long runs because of it.

By mile 3-4 I was back at my expected pace, but toward the end I was paying for going too fast in miles 2-4. The last two miles of the race were really difficult, but I made it through. My time was about 1 hour 57 minutes, so not my best but not bad for me. I was tired the rest of the day.

I didn't find a nice ass to follow at this race. I don't set out to do this, but if there is a guy with a nice looking ass going about my pace I'll run behind him. It gives me something to look at, and I can kind of zone out and not worry about my pace. This race had lots of nice natural scenery, but not the male anatomy kind.

So the lesson that I should learn from this is leave the house earlier, arrive earlier, and always pee before the race.