Sometimes you're in the mood to lead, sometimes you want to follow. In deciding on travel plans, I wanted to think as little as possible. Linda's husband Scott was flying out Thursday at noon and returning on Sunday at 2:30, so I figured that would work for me. Get me there in plenty of time to help out as needed Friday, attend the technical meeting, etc. Scott and I get to Phoenix no worries. Our flight to St Louis is cancelled, we get to spend a night at the Twin Palms in Phoenix. Good news was they gave us a free room and dinner. $10 towards anything at IHOP. We drank many Fat Tires at the bar along with 2 other guys and a bunch of tucans, macaws, parrots. I got a burger, Scott a patty melt from the neighboring IHOP and we ate at the bar. Most don't know that IHOP does dinner. They do, although IHOP should probably stick with breakfast.
Get to the airport and see Coach Sevene from Team Monterey Bay and Blake Russell. Of course we leave Phoenix late, get to St Louis late, the shuttle is late and we miss the manditory technical meeting. Not a big deal to me or Scott, but since Blake is not at the meeting and instead is with us at the airport, she cannot show her uniform at the meeting and is thus DQ'd. She is on the verge of tears at the news on top of having been traveling since 8 the previous day. Sev get's her back into the race, but pretty petty crap to pull by USATF particularly since they never mentioned anything previously about DQ'ing athletes for failing to get approval on their uni's at the tech meeting. Sev mentions she's "very, fit and will make the race honest, I promise you that" when I ask how she's looking. We get to the hotel, talk to a few people. I grab a brew with Jill's family then we all head to dinner Bed is early as we have an early 4:00 AM (2:00 AM here) wake up.
Sat 4/3:
Head to the hospitality room at 4:30 AM (7:00 am race start) and find Jenn there. Grab some coffee and toast with Silvia, then head back talk to Jenn. See Deena who says she's buying property in Los Osos or Morro Bay soon, an idea Jenn seemed to like. I actually got to meet Aggie team member Kari Bertrand face to face. Now not sure what I was thinking, but I'm was thinking a 33 year old doctor from Gilroy looks a certain way. What I saw was a 33 year old OB-GYN from Gilroy who looked like a college coed who serves burgers at Red Robin. She was all bubbly, has a pony tail with ribbons that matched the new Asics uni's, she had glitter on her face. Looked like she was heading to the sock hop vs a marathon. Kinda shocking to me as I'm used to seeing a guy like Dave Frank all serious and stinky and a mess before a marathon. This was much better.
Scott, Steve Boaz and I take the shuttle to the start. A great facility that the Snake and I both thought we could live with. Nice track, nice stands, lights, grass fields, perfect for track, but this is a marathon so of course they start the race in the opposite direction. First 800 covered in 3 min, then Blake Russell takes off and covers the next 800 in 2:35. She laps the last 2 runners who start out at 7:50 pace to applause from most everyone except us who wonder why in the heck they're even running.
Scott, Steve and I run the 2-3 miles to the main part of the course and camp out at the 6 mile point. Nice course for idiots like us to view. 3 vantage points all within roughly 800m of each other. 6 mile loops for the gals means we see them every 2-3 miles. First through 10k is Russell at 33:33. See Sev who mentions her 2nd mile was a bit brisk at 5:05. The rest of the field is a good 60 seconds arears. Our gals are about 3 minutes back real close together.
12 miles and it's still Russell with a ginormous lead. They go out and back by us meaning we get to see them at 12.5 and again at 13. The athletes get to see each other as well. Deena is next through with a gap over Silvia, Boulet, Spangler and others I'm forgetting. Our gals are lead by Linda, then Cori a few ticks back, then comes Jenn with a large group. On the way back, Jenn is no longer with the large group. I ask her what happened. She smiled and said she had to take a potty stop. Turns out she had to take the $1k dump during the race and just up and did what I couldn't - she just dropped 'em in the middle of the street and went for it. Next up was Nicole, then Kari who was all smiles at this point. Maria was the final one by. No Jill, which sent Snake off to find out what happened. Just a bad day from the get go for Jill. She dropped at 11 saying it wasn't her day. Blake heads through halfway in 1:11:3-something. Fast paricularly since it was warming up and the course was pretty hilly. Looks like she was making it honest.
At 16 it's still Russell followed by Kastor in full top end speed to catch her not far behind. Silvia is still in 3rd, Rhines and Boulet are side by side. Linda still leads our gals and is in roughly 15th. Cori is running strong in about 20th, Jenn is looking good in 25th or so, Nicole looks like she's jogging not too far behind Jenn. I missed Kari and Maria.
At 20 I had a bit of advice for most everyone in our group, "stop running and start racing!" In unison, that's what they did. All started to pick up spots, Cori in particular would go on to run her fastest 10k of the day. At 23, Scott and I get there too late to see Deena or Colleen go by, but we heard they were in that order with Deena in control. We got there just in time to see our travel partner Blake go by and she was in the marathon shuffle in a bad way. You just could see the lacid acid pouring from her pores. Way back at this point and I mean way back was Jenn Rhines who had left Boulet was in 4th and racing home looking strong. No way she was gonna catch Russell even if Blake was running 8 min miles was what I was thinking. Our gals all had picked up places. Linda was now in 12th with Crain in her sights, Cori in 16th and moving on a group of 3, Nicole made a huge move and was in 20th. Jenn was right behind Nicole in 21st.
Scott and I made a mad dash for the finsh line. We got there in plenty of tme. Enough time for me to visit the little boys room . While resting there I heard that Deena was in second and Colleen had taken the lead. I was wondering what the heck was going on. I forgot this was the Trials and people were racing their hearts out. We were stationed at just past the 26 mile point. We saw Colleen come by looking great waving a flag, then came Deena doing the lactic acid shuffle. Then we waited what seemd an eternity and around the corner came Russell with Rhines going around her hard. Blake walked a few steps after being passed, then jogged in head down. Rhines came in like king Carl. Our gals looked great. Linda a few ticks behind Spangler for 11th overall, a 2:37 finish and a surpising $7500 to the bank account. Surprising because we both thought they only had money for the top 10. Then came Cori making ground on Crain but coming up a bit short. Still it was nearly a 9 minute PR and a 13th place finish to earn her largest payday of her life with $5500. Nicole continued the PR birage finishing in 2:41 for 17th, $4500 and a 4 min PR. Jenn was next in 22nd with a nearly 4 min PR as well in 2:41. Jenn was the second youngest runner in the field and the youngest in the top 50. Seems many noticed as she picked up an agent along the way who's flying her out to run the New York Mini Marthon 10k in June - all expenses paid. Kari ran in 77th with a 2:54 finish while Maria ran what she termed her last marathon in 2:58 and change, the last runner under 3 hours.
Our top 4 finishers came in ranked 14th, 88th, 77th and 100th respectively. They finished 11th, 13th, 17th and 22nd. All beat a ton of people ranked a head of them and raced very smart.
Of course after the race, we went out for some food and drinks. Scott and I got Linda a few too many slushy strawberry something or others and when the guy asked if we wanted an extra shot added for a buck, we said sure. Linda started looking like she was shrinking. Soon therafter, Scott had to carry her home. After that, I ended up at the hotel bar having a few with the race director of the Autin Marathon. The one thing he said was his prized possession was a "I'm Nuts about Running" shirt he got from Angel and Van Dine back in the 70's. It's all ripped and his wife keeps wanting to throw it out. I sent him a new one. After that I sat with Cori and chatted about some future training concepts that revolved around everything but a marathon in the near future. Looks like 1500/5k for her and Jenn as well. We should have a heck of an XC team next year from what I can tell.
Sunday saw Linda, Scott, Snake, myself and Sev trying to get back to California. Of course our flight was cancelled and we had to wait many hours to get back home. America West really stinks is what I came away with.
Overall, the women Ags ran great. 3 PR's of a very significant nature, 3 in the top 20, 4 in the top 25 - that and the fact Asics Aggies won the national team championship based on our top 3 finishers shows what a great day it was for us. Very strong running by our women in St Louis.
They continue our tradition of doing very well at the marathon trials and made me very proud to be in the same company as them.
I'm next gonna write our friends at America West and see if I can't complain my case for a free ticket so I can catch the next edition of this event. Really wish it was televised because it was one heck of a great race that I'm sure most who were there won't forget.