Pat's Run

I ran in the 2008 edition of Pat's Run in Tempe this morning. It's an unusual distance of 4.2 miles (42 being Pat Tillman's jersey number when he played at A.S.U.). Proceeds from the event benefit the Pat Tillman Foundation, which teaches leadership skills to young people. (I admit, I had to look that up.) The day didn't start out so well. I didn't get a good night's sleep, so I was dragging. I went into the kitchen to make my usual pre-race breakfast of peanut butter on toast only to discover that we were out of peanut butter. And then, to top it off, on the way to the race, I spilled Vitamin Water all over my car. Once I got down to the race site, things went better. I had plenty of time to pick up my number, stretch and chit-chat with Bill before the race. Former A.S.U football coach, Bruce Snyder tried to say a few words about Pat Tillman, but his microphone kept cutting out. After a few attempts to get it working again, they gave up and started the race. Bill and I started out pretty strong. I glanced at my Garmin a couple times and saw we were doing about an 8:15 pace. We kept that up until we turned onto Curry Rd., which has a somewhat steep incline for about 1/2 mile. My back started bothering me here, but I kept plugging along. By the time we hit Scottsdale Rd., my back felt better. But my nemesis (my Fun Size bladder) appeared. For whatever reason, I often have to urinate REALLY badly during races. It makes it difficult to focus and keep up a good pace, because the harder I run, the worse it gets. But I managed to just plug along and finished in a decent, but not great, time of 36:58-- an 8:49 pace. As we were leaving, we saw a poor fellow that was receiving medical attention at about the 4.1 mile point. I hope he was okay. That made me feel even better about my performance, though. Activity Route: -- Elev. Avg: 1161 ft Location: Tempe, AZ Elev. Gain: +52 ft Date: 04/19/08 Up/Downhill: [+255/-203] Time: 08:01 AM Difficulty: 2.5 / 5.0   Weather: Overcast   65 F temp; 20% humidity   65 F heat index; winds SE 8 Performance Distance: 4.24 miles Time: 0:37:01 Speed: 6.9 mph Pace: 8' 44 /mi Heart Rate: 183 bpm (Avg) Calories: 638 200 bpm (Peak) Map   Elevation (ft)   Pace (min/mile)   Heart Rate (bpm)   Splits Mile Pace (min/mile) Speed (mph) Heart Rate Elev Gain actual +/- avg actual +/- avg 1 8' 46 +0' 02 6.8 -0.0 165 -10 ft 2 8' 26 -0' 18 7.1 +0.2 186 +36 ft 3 8' 37 -0' 07 7.0 +0.1 190 -23 ft 4 9' 09 +0' 25 6.5 -0.3 195 -3 ft end 9' 12 +0' 28 6.5 -0.4 198 +52 ft Versus average of 8' 44 min/mile

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