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Leadwoman – Pedernales Falls 60k (6/22/19)

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The following weekend, I headed down to Austin with the girls to race and stay with Coach Steve and his wife Kat again.  We talked a lot that weekend about what the rest of training should be like.  I was supposed to race a night race that weekend. LP was going to have to drive down after work that Saturday to come get the girls from the race and take them back to Steve and Kat’s.  But, Uncle Steve and Aunt Kat insisted that the girls just stay with them and they would go, go to the movies and put them to bed.  What a lifesaver that was!  For everyone. This is where it became apparent that it took a village to get this done.  The girls had a blast and got to eat pizza!  I got to go to my race stress free.  And LP was saved from a back and forth trip to Austin with a less than 12-hour turn around.

This is the first night race I’d done since Ragnar.  At Ragnar, it was only one short leg at night.  I ran with a really crappy headlamp and a flashlight.  It worked because I only needed water on that leg since it was only 4 miles long.  Picture two hands.  One had a water bottle and one had a flash light.  And that worked.  At R2R2R, I used the same crappy headlamp, but since there were 7 other good headlamps, I didn’t realize how bad mine was until this 60k race in Austin.  As a matter of fact, I had forgotten my headlamps in Fort Worth this weekend and had to go buy a third crappy headlamp at Academy for this race.  I also forget my visor and had to borrow one from Kat.  Again, it’s different when you’re bringing kids for races.  For some reason, it makes following lists really difficult!

The race started at 7 pm.  Coming back from CO the week before, I started out feeling fantastic and at a pretty fast clip.  I kept thinking to myself, as I was passing people, that I needed to slow down.  Things were going great until it got dark.  Insert unknown visor and crappy headlamp.  It was becoming a trend that when I had to take the girls with me to a race, I would ALWAYS forget something.  This was a very critical race for me.  I learned quickly how important the lists are before events.  And to actually look at the lists.  And to be sure to bring EVERYTHING on the list.  The headlamp barely put off any light.   The visor I had borrowed had a nike symbol embroidered right on my forehead. So, the crappy headlamp was pushing the nike symbol into my head.  Before long, that caused a massive headache.  I took the headlamp off and started carrying as flashlight.  Bad idea for me.  I could not eat and carry a headlamp and see.  Basically, this race was a shitstorm of mistakes.  I DNF’d ½ way through.  Not because I couldn’t do it physically.  But because it had quickly become the complete opposite of what it was supposed to be.  I still got a 19.5 training run in.  And I had another night run planned in 3 weeks so I wasn’t too worried.

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