Gotta Get The Game Face On

Yesterday I ran what is probably the closest thing to my hometown ½ marathon, the Long Island Half Marathon. As usual, I was monitoring the weather in the days before but when you are travelling in advance of the race, it makes things a bit challenging from a "what do I wear" perspective. I thought I had the scenarios covered, but by the time I arrived in New York 4 days before the race, the weather forecast had shifted to being very warm on the day of the race. What do I consider warm? Anything above 60 degrees at race time. The forecast at race time had the temperature in the high 60s/low 70s. Given my last race in the heat, let's just say that I was not that excited about this.
On Friday, I decided that what I had packed was not going to work and I needed to focus on keeping cool. Good thing I was in New York City, where there is every store imaginable and as luck would have it, adidas has a store right near where we were staying. So a couple of purchases were made and that was that. When I went to pick up the race packets on Saturday, it was very warm and it was around the time that I would be finishing the race in 24 hours. A check-in to Coach Lesley was in order, even though she was in San Francisco with some of her other clients for Escape from Alcatraz – some crazy triathlon that has the athletes jump in the SF Bay (hello sharks!), run and bike some awful hills in SF.
Lesley got in touch and advised to take in more sodium given the heat forecasted for Sunday. The sweat factor will obviously be increased, which will necessitate the sodium intake. Fortunately I was in the mood for some "east coast" Chinese food (read: non-traditional) and the sodium in those dishes would probably make most cardiologists turn red, so it all worked out. LOL. Obviously it also meant lots of water consumption throughout Saturday.
After a family dinner (yes, I had wine), I got everything prepped given we were leaving early for the race and didn't want to wake up lil' JB. My phone pops up with an alert with a new e-mail. Nothing like getting a message from the race organizers less than 12 hours before the race notifying everyone of an extreme heat advisory and precautions are going to be taken with stopping the race or re-routing people if they are moving beyond a certain pace in the full marathon. Great.
I did figure that this would be good practice for a couple of other races that I have scheduled for later on in the year, so tried to focus on that. Lesley also told me that I was psyching myself out with the heat and to focus on my preparation. OK, time to believe in yourself and what Coach is saying. But I had a goal time in mind that involved finishing in under 1 hour and 55 minutes, so the heat was going to definitely impact that.
So we wake up on Sunday and head out to the start. Plans were laid out the night before about where to cheer for me and, more importantly, give me more of my race beverage. I get dropped off and one of my friends, Mike Roessner, from Massapequa High School ('89) spotted me and we exchanged a quick hug. I then needed to find my friend, Greg Jones (also of MHS '89 - pictured with me), because I had his race bib (along with his friend's). Fortunately Greg got there with his friend, Paul, and wife, Dena, so ok…. Bibs distributed – check. Mandatory bathroom stop before gun goes off – check. Belt secured – check. Watch on – check. It's starting to feel a tad warm, even with the cloud cover, but unfortunately, it is also starting to feel very humid as thunderstorms were in the forecast for later in the day. Lovely.
[Race recap is in the next entry – click here.]