After crossing the start line of 2010's Country Music Half-Marathon with Ennio Morricone's regal Ecstacy of Gold, I finished with dose of Springsteen's Badlands.
Both felt appropriate, as did the song which began shortly after I failed to spy Laura at Mile 6: She's Not There by the Zombies.
I didn't catch a drop of rain on the half-marathon course, but instead collided with a wall of humidity leading the thunderheads. I walked away with Team Gross just moments before the worse of the storms hit (really, we were getting it the car as the severe rain reached LP Field).
Honestly, I would have preferred the rain. It would have save my last two miles.
Overall, the race had few kinks and few disappointments, aside from not seeing Laura and not getting iced down towels at the finish line. A rather corpulent man shove me and urged me to run straight. I reminded him that there are 30,000 people and he should just relax. Then I took that negative energy and pushed forward.
I resisted temptation the mock further. He looked solidly Italian, as much as my feet hurt, cement boots would have not have ease the pain.
Annoying new use for smart phones on the course - snapping picture of the clock time at each mile marker. Unless you start with the elite runners in Corral 1, that isn't your true time.
Until the 10-mile, I ran well. Better than expected. Once we left the redeveloped portion of the Gulch, where the long condo tower shadows preserved the morning coolness, it got ugly. By the Mile 12 marker, my calves turned into a bundle of shrieking cramps, which sometimes emanated from my ankles as well.
As they popped and sizzled, I continued to run with what little gas I still had. But reasons to abandon that strategy were everywhere, lying on the sidewalk with paramedics administering ice packs or in the worst cases, oxygen.
Damn, I had finished 12 miles; if I walked most of the last one, what harm would arise? Beating my standard 2:26 minute time for the course was no longer my object; finishing without ruining myself was. So 2:32:46 will have to stand for now.
Despite grabbing three or four waters at the last few stops, I was Donovan McNabb at the Super Bowl and had no answer for humidity and dehydration. But my body's reaction to this year's round of unpredictable Nashville spring weather confirms my status as a cold-weather runner.
As for high altitude running, anwers will wait for next week in Bozeman.
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