We left San Antonio Saturday afternoon and got to the expo around 4:00. After getting our gear we walked around for about an hour and I managed to get a pair of Brooks shorts on sale. I have been meaning to try their shorts so I am pretty excited about that. After we left there we headed over to the hotel, managed to book a room months ago at the Doubletree in the UT area, so we were about a mile from the start which turned out to be perfect. We decided to just chill there and eat dinner at the hotel restaurant. That wasn't the best idea, but that is another story.
I wanted to get up at 0400 Sunday morning, but Amy convinced me to snooze the alarm 30 minutes. After we got up and did the pre-race ritual stuff, it was 0545 and time to head out. We decided to walk/jog over to the start village, which was a good idea because it was about 39 degrees and it got our muscles warmed up. We went to the military tent to check our gear which may have saved a few minutes, but I heard the standard gear check was outstanding. We made it back to the start line area around 0645 and finished stretching out. Now let me say this now, some of my race experience came from starting in the 11:41/mile pace area. I now realize that was a bad idea, but in the grand scheme of things, it had little to no affect on my final time.
The race officially started at 0700 after the national anthem, which we barely heard. They really need to put a few more speakers out. We made it across the start line at 0715 and Amy and I stuck together for about a half mile and then I took off. I took the first mile at a 10 min pace, I saw the course profile and wanted to respect the hills before I got to see them first hand. Luckily, I was absolutely flying on this course! I think all of the hill training paid off. The first 2 miles took a few turns through Downtown Austin before crossing over Lady Bird Lake onto South Congress St. Even though this was the uphill section of the race it was easy to get lost in all the awesome shops, restaurants, and food trucks along the route. We actually spent 2 more hours here later in the evening. I held a pretty good pace up to where we turned to get on 1st St and head back down the hill. I took off and easily hit some of my best mile paces to date, but had to do quite a bit of passing by using the oncoming traffic lane. Once back downtown, it was on to some of the less scenic areas of the course, but the Livestrong cheer section was really awesome. After the full and half course split, the steep hills appeared and I realized my extremely high hopes of sub 2 hours may be in jeopardy. They weren't horrible since we have some like these on base, but they were challenging. I never had to stop and walk, but I wasn't exactly sprinting these bad boys. Luckily, when you go up a hill, you get to go down it and get some time back. Once through the final hills, it was the final stretch and I kicked it in to high gear and crossed the line at 2:03:44, a full 18 minutes faster than my previous best at shaved 1m22s of my previous best pace. I was stoked!
The finish line was very well organized. After getting my medal, which is awesome (even more so when held up to light), I grabbed a bottle of water and a much needed Gatorade protein shake. There was a lot of post race food, but I just opted for some HEB ranch chips. Once out of the finish area to the military tent, I was surprised to find them pouring two free beers from local brewer Adelbert's, I went with the Scratchin Hippo and it was damn good. I gathered up our gear bag and got the race vest off and put the jacket back on since wind hitting sweat is cold. Once Amy finished (PR for her as well) I got her a beer and we walked/jogged (I'm mean) back to the hotel. Afterwards we hit up a great place for lunch and amazing craft beers, it was called Hopfields, a must try for beer lovers. After lunch is when we went back to the part of South Congress we ran to look through shops and visit the Hey Cupcake truck. The nighttime consisted of grabbing some pizza at Roppolo's on 6th street and swinging by Pete's dueling piano bar. We checked it out at SXSW last year and had to go back. Oh, and we got our Hoek's death metal pizza after that, finally!
Here are the pics of the route, elevation profile, and my splits. I will definitely consider doing this race again next year, but for now, time to get back to training for the OBX Flying Pirate 1/2 in April, that sub 2:00 isn't going to run itself!
