Addison Oaks CPS Race #7 Sept. 23, 2007

Race Time: 1:35:26
Placement: 17/21 (ouch)
YTD Standings: 6th

Forgot to wear HR monitor.

Let me start out with the positives:  It was a nice day, a great atmosphere and a perfect trail.  Now the negative: the race.

I am very disappointed in my results.  I am trying not to get to hard on myself, after all, I barely trained these past few weeks.  Between the funeral and me just getting over a bad cold, my body could have used a couple more of RR days.  I knew I would be fighting a very 'tired' body, but I thought my base would carry me.  Not so much.

So what went wrong?  First, leg cramps.  I believe I over hydrated myself.  It was SO dusty, my mouth was dry.  I just couldn't 'quench' my need for water.  I do drink Heed, but I still think drinking three bottles in 90 minutes is WAY too much.  That lead to the leg cramps.  Even after the race, I think I emptied one of the water coolers.

Second issue was mental breakdown.  My body was telling me it was tired and wanted to stop.  My mind should have been encouraging it.  Instead, it was agreeing.  A few times I tried to regain control and start pushing it, but then the leg cramps would hit, which would just discourage me more.

I did use my new Garmin Edge for the first time, although I forgot to bring the HR monitor.  The best thing about this computer was the auto lap feature.  Once I hit 'start' it started the time and marked that spot as the beginning.  Each time I crossed that spot, it counted the lap.  I had it set up to show me two things: current lap time and previous lap time.  It was great feed back to see my current time vs. my last time.  I could have set it up to show how I was tracking compared to my last lap (ahead or behind during lap) but haven't read that far into the instruction manual.

Anyway's, now I have a ton of data that I'm not entirely sure what to do with.  I know there is some great info there that can help me improve, I just need to figure out how to interpret it.

Here is the link for Addison Oaks on Motion Base. I am embarrassed to share that.  It does show four laps.  That was my bad.  It's only 13 seconds.