Running and Racing update ...

Tacoma
I ran the Tacoma City Marathon as a pacer for the time of 3:40. Right off (mile 2) my group spilt in two. Half stayed with me and half went ahead to try and "bank" some time. At the half I was right at 1:50 but I only had one runner left. A mile later I was by myself. I passed a few of the "bankers" in the next five miles. I heard the same thing each time I pulled along side one of them to chat and give encouragement. "OH *%^$#*! It's you, I was really hoping not to see you again" How's that for feeling popular? I can understand, I would have been saying the same thing. I tried to nurse them along but couldn't. Finding myself alone with nobody to pace and "hurting" I decided I decide to join a fallen 3:20 pacer and walk it in the last 5 miles for a 3:54. Normally I wouldn't give up on a race but having a stomach flu that didn't allow me to eat more than a few hundred calories a day for the past 4 days was too much for me to overcome. I felt (mentally) pretty shitty after the race and even now I still feel bad that I couldn't run the 3:40 that I promised I could. Maybe I should have banked some time...

Redmond Watershed 12 hour
I really like this race. I was hoping it would be super hot like last year but mid 70's was good. I went into the race knowing I was way under trained. My weekly mileage since Oct was been in the 30-35 miles per week (since Plain100). Lucky for me endurance takes along time to lose, and my foot speed is a little better having trained for shorter races of 26.2 miles.

My goals were to;
Run the whole 12 hours, not just 10:30 or 11:51.
Run a PR distance.
Keep all my big loops under an hour.
I Ran for 11:57 with my last small loop being the fastest thanks to a bored LB that ran the last hour with me.
I ran 11 big loops and 9 small loops. I could have ran a tenth big loop but was just not motivated enough to spend an hour out there by myself. Final mileage was 65.61 which was a PR by .72 miles. Not very impressive in my book but it's twice my weekly mileage so I'll take it as a success.
If I subtract out the 2-5 minutes I spent at the a/s filling my bottle and running to the car, etc., I was able to keep all but two loops under an hour, but just barely.

Sometime on my 9th or 10th loop I passed two runners walking/standing on the trail. It was on one of those long narrow raised straight sections that cut through the swamps on the back side on the loop. They said there was a cougar up ahead. I saw a rear end that seemed too dark (could have been shaded) and a tail that seemed too short (could have been pointed at me) disappear into the bushes. Other than that, it looked like a cougar to me. I thought, well I have my Mio GPS/MP3 player blasting Aerosmith so it wont want to stick around to eat me. As I get to the spot where it was my tunes died! Oh shit... well I didn't see it so I just kept running and looking left into the bushes. One of the runners (who waited for me to go first) said she could tell it was a cougar by it ears which I didn't see. It might have been, I don't know. Did anybody else see it?

Maybe I'll post some pictures later.