Last night (this morning?) I ran the first annual Time Traveler PI Miler put on by the Science Museum of Western Virginia. It started at 1:50 am so that with the time change and setting clocks back an hour, we could finish before we started. I finished in 22:10 at 1:12:10 am, giving me a total time of -37:50 minutes!! How's that for a PR? (13/221 racers, 2nd female; Full results here)
My race week "strategy" included a taper of zero working out since the B2B race the prior Saturday plus a week of less-than-stellar eating capped off by carb loading with Halloween candy and beer the night before. I would not recommend this approach, but hey it was my off-season kick-off week and I took full advantage. I am cleaning up my act starting now!! (Yeah, yeah, off-season except for this little race)
I rode up with fellow crazy people Lynne, Carmel, Anne, Jessie (and TJ who took the photo below where we all look really warm and all our black pants look oddly grey).
...and I met up with other fellow crazy people including such notables as Nancy (top photo, left), for whom a 10-mile race that morning was apparently not enough for the day, Karen (top photo, in orange) who finds time as a 4th year medical student for her cute "little hobby" of Ironman racing including IMCHOO a few weeks ago, and Ron who has been known to sign up for (and race!) an iron-distance race just days before!
It was nice to be among other PI enthusiasts!
the parade of runners headed to the starting line!
It was really neat to do this out-and-back race on the Roanoke Greenway, lit up only by our headlamps and flashlights! It offered a quietness and peacefulness that you only experience in the dark. I didn't plan to go real hard, but I fell into race auto-pilot and enjoyed hunting down and passing the only other female I could see ahead of me (the winner was WAY far ahead).
The course was set up so that the turn-around point represented the edge of our solar system. Instead of mileage markers, there were signs letting us know which planetary orbit we were passing through! I kept wondering if they included Pluto or not, and I guessed not.
I felt my watch signal the passing of the first mile, but never heard the second. I kept thinking that second mile felt awfully long! Then when the watch went off, and I thought I still had a mile+ to go, there was the finish! Happy me!
In keeping with the Time Travel / Back to the Future theme, a DeLorian was supposed to be at the race, but ironically it broke down half a mile from the race, darn flux capacitor! It's OK, Dr. Emmett Brown made it there! He posed with 12-year-old Parker Albright and I. Parker was the overall female winner of the race, and I came in second to her, over 2 minutes back. Great job, Parker!
The best reward was the hot chocolate at the end of the race, which I am fairly certain was the best I have ever had. And that's not just because I was freezing cold. They also had PI in the form of giant Benny Marconi's pizza.
I would definitely recommend this race as just a quirky, fun, different thing to do! Great job, Science Museum of Western Virginia!!
