All Downhill From Here

We got up at 4:45 Sunday morning, as the Dawn’s Half *M* started at 6 am, and Ellie was running the full. Ellie had run the 15k AND the 5k the day before; she was crazily running the full *M* in a quest for the PT Cruiser Triple Challenge.

Dawn wanted to have breakfast in our room instead of joining the other Penguins in the hospitality suite – I think she was a bit nervous inside, about her race and just needed to be in control of things so nothing went wrong or got forgotten. I know this feeling – I get it a lot before a race. I toasted up cinnamon raisin bagels with peanut butter for us.

We hooked up with some other Penguins down in the lobby and headed over to the race start in the dark. This morning was a little warmer than it had been for my race the day before. This was a big day for some of our Penguins; some were doing their first *M* ever, and there were others attempting the Triple Challenge with either a Half or a Full *M*.

I had brought my film camera along, so snapped some shots of the race start as everyone rushed past. My film camera seems to take better photos in the dark, but I don’t have the photos developed for that yet.

After we saw the crowd run off and were ready to head back to the hotel, we saw Ellie running back and forth over the start line. What gives? She had been in the portapotty when the race started and now that she was ready to start, the chip mat had been turned off. Ack! The officials waved her to start anyway, and I think they just used the gun time for her time instead of chip time. We gave Ellie wishes for luck and sent her on her way.

We non-racers headed back to the hotel for a second breakfast. I read up on the previous days’ races in the Tribune, and then it was time to head down to the race finish line, about a mile away, to cheer in our Halfers. Our hotel was on the *M* race route, and on the way to the finish we saw Wray Jean, Jeannie, Ellie and I think even Charles in the first stages of their Full. It was fun to wish them well in their arduous task ahead. We thought of our other friends out on the course and prayed strong thoughts for them.

We got to the finish line shortly after missing Becky come in with a 2:14 Half time, and saw the women’s *M* winner cross the line. I had forgotten to ask Rachel and David when they were expecting to finish, so missed seeing them race.

We settled in about 50 meters up from the finish, where the cheering squad had been the day before. We had a couple of bright pink boas and I was wearing my tiara again, in support for our other Pink Penguin Princesses. The Full *M* course looped back beside the finishing chutes and we were able to see all of the Full racers head out on their out and back again, just after their half-way point. It must have been hard for them to not just head for the finish line instead, but they all stayed the course and carried on. We cheered for them the loudest.

It seemed to take forever for Dawn to finish, but she sprinted in, passing several skinny marathoners.

I took pictures of several of our Penguins finishing, but must admit that I got rather excited and emotional as some of them finished, and forgot to actually snap their picture. It was an exhausting and exhilharating experience, and I wasn’t even racing!

We cheered and cheered and cheered for hours. There was one Team in Training coach that would run in with his finishers, encouraging them in their last moments of glory, and then run back for others on the team. We saw him run in over and over again. I think he needs to take credit for an Ultra. We cheered in all the slowest racers the loudest, Penguins or not.

I did take a break at one point when I did the math and realized that we would have at least an hour or more break before our Full racers would start to trickle in. I remembered discussions on our Penguin lists about how chocolate milk is a great recovery drink. I also remembered how good Carlene’s salty potato chips tasted after my race, so Marie-Claude (from Quebec City) and I headed over to the nearby Publix grocery store and picked up a couple of six-packs of individual bottles of chocolate milk, 2 big bags of potato chips, and while we were at it, some neat postcards. Most everyone was grateful for the extra yummies, if they still had an apetite. Some of us cheerleaders had some too.

Our last finishers came in at around 7 hours to quite a fanfare. The racers had been moved to the sidewalk for the last hour or so, and the finish line had been downsized to just a clock behind the bleachers, but all the Penguins (maybe 20 of us?) cheered and waved our pink stuff as if they ruled the world. At that moment, they did. They ROCKED!

Day 4: Saturday

This was race day, and you all know how that started out. After the race I had a little soak in a cold bath and then headed down for a swim in the outdoor pool and a soak in the hot tub.

I had stashed some ice cream in the freezer upon my return from the race, and treated myself to both flavours – Godiva chocolate with chocolate hearts, and vanilla with chocolate hearts. Ironically I plunked myself in front of the cooking channel on t.v. and watched low-carb cooking. I felt delightfully rebellious.

After a quick shower I headed out to the Columbia, a 100 year old Cuban restaurant up in Ybor City, the old part of Tampa, with 7 other Penguins. We had a great time drinking sangria and I had pulled beef in a sauce with rice and peas. It was delicious, but I saved room for a key lime pie for dessert. Gotta have key lime pie when one is in Florida. I bought a package of sangria mix in the gift store as a souvenir for my wine-loving husband. We couldn’t stay late enough for the flamenco dancers, as some of our party were racing the next day, so back to the hotel we went. Good thing; I was getting up early to cheer everyone, and that takes a lot of energy.

I know this is getting long, but I think I’m writing this as much for my own memories as for you, so pardon if I bore you with my rambling.

Day 3: Friday

I forgot to tell you about our extra roommate, Ellie. We were delighted to have her stay with us – she’s sort of from Maryland, but lives a nomadic lifestyle in a motorhome now. She took our messy room and snoring all in style, and we felt like we’d adopted another sister-friend into our team.

I slept a little better Thursday night than I had the previous night, but was still a little dopey. A breakfast buffet was included with our room rate and I was very happy to dig into a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of scrambled eggs, fruit and yogurt. There were lots of Penguins down for breakfast and I had a hard time staying at one table – I wanted to be with them all at once!

After breakfast we attended a few workshops held in a conference room at the adjoining hotel. First a yogi led us in a yoga session for beginners. I had never done yoga in a real, live class before, and it was much more fun than doing it alone at home in front of a video (I tried it once about 6 years ago). The yogi led us through some very simple stretches and some specifically good for runners. As the poses progressed in difficulty I was able to modify most of them for when my body refused to completely cooperate. I felt very relaxed by the end, and all my kinks and brain-fuzziness from the poor sleep had gone. I will try this at home! I think my daughter might enjoy doing yoga with me, too.

After the yoga we had some discussion sessions on trail racing – I had brought my Yaktrax for everyone to see, diet and weightloss, weight training, etc. Then Linae from St. Petersburg gave a talk on triathlons. We learned about equipment like seal masks and tri bikes, and lots of other encouraging stuff about what to be aware of in your first tri. At the end of the Triathlon workshop there was a draw for a doorprize and I won a full triathlon training plan by Coach Ken Johnson! Lucky me!

Why do I feel a need to go swimming?

When I later looked at the detailed questions and realized that I wouldn’t be able to do this fantastic program justice in the next year or two, I passed the program on to Ellie, who’s looking at her first Ironman soon.

After the morning workshops we walked to the convention center (about a kilometer away) where the Race Expo was, to pick up our packages. Dianne and Dawn were stubbornly wearing shorts, despite the cold breeze and overcast skies. I was chilly enough to borrow Dianne’s gloves which had been lurking in her jacket pocket. As we approached the convention center, one guy with a Gasparilla race bag gave Dawn a once-over and exclaimed “What, you think you’re in FLORIDA!”

We poked around the Expo and popped in to see Karen Bingham at her booth and John Bingham at his. I found some Defeet socks with penguins on them and they just had to come home with me.

As I was standing in line to pick up my race package for the 15 k, Dianne sidled over with an evil grin and said, in her best airplane-desk-paging voice “Mrs. Cooksley, Mrs. Cooksley, you’ve been upgraded to the Marathon.”

!!!! Apparently the fleeting look of shock on my face was hilarious.

We ate lunch and headed back to the hotel for a quick swim before getting ready for supper. The streets had been cleared and blocked off on our way back, as President Bush was in town to give a speech and his cavalcade would be coming right past our hotel. We saw the limosines, vans and other assorted official vehicles go by from our hotel window.

We went over to the hospitality suite for pizza, spaghetti and meatballs. I had a Southpaw beer and a glass of Little Penguin merlot. No going overboard, I had a race the next day. Just as dessert was coming out, the fire alarm went off. I announced to the room “Quick, grab the chocolate and head for the stairs!” Someone on the 4th floor had apparently tripped a smoke alarm with some bad cooking.

We turned in early again, this time I had a race number pinned to my shirt and a chip on my shoe.

Day 2, Thursday: We walked to a local K-mart and I found a pair of sandals I’d been looking for for 2 years. I knew I could find them in Florida! Nice, low heel, yet classy upper and without the thong thing between the toe. Pinch me, I’m in Florida in February and I’ve found a great pair of shoes at a very reasonable price. Is this heaven?

Shawn took us to a couple of running/fitness gear stores and we didn’t find any Brooks Addictions for me, but Dianne and Dawn found some bright pink running hats they were very happy about. We had lunch at Subway’s, and went back to Shawn’s place to change into running clothes for a little jog.

I thought I was all ready to go, when Dianne looked at me and said “You’re taking your water.” I was? But I was just going for a few little miles, a mere half hour jog, and it wasn’t that hot out there… She faced my surprised look and said, again “You’re TAKING your WATER.” Did you see a question mark back there in that sentence? I took my waterbelt with a full bottle. When you bring your Coach on a running trip, you listen to her. We went to a little exercise park that had a couple of choices of paved path loops under big, beautiful trees. I smiled at the same little old friendly hispanic man a couple of times as I jogged around.

I was SO glad I’d brought my water bottle. The sun came out and I was sweating like crazy within 10 minutes in the Florida humidity. I had a totally crappy post-flight, pre-race run, and walked in the third mile. I was kind of happy to have the crappy run over with; I hoped that meant that I would have a way better race on Saturday.

After we cleaned up and changed we stopped by a supermarket to pick up some munchies and headed to the hotel to check in and meet everyone. Judi from Jacksonville and her family helped us with our luggage. We quickly unpacked and then others started to arrive.

What joy! I had wanted to meet these people I had been e-mailing with for so long, and here we were, in the same room, hugging and looking at each other’s faces and listening to each other’s accents, sopping up nuances that didn’t come through the little letters making up the words on our computer screens. Some things about each person were very different; some were amazingly how we thought they’d be. It was almost overwhelming.

It didn’t occur to me until about 8 pm that we hadn’t even eaten supper. At one point a couple of Penguins went out for their evening walk and we invited the remainder up to our suite for munchies. It was like a big pyjama party. When it was time to sleep I could barely close my eyes. I was really HERE, in Tampa, with the PENGUINS!

We flew down Wednesday and came back Monday. I only raced for a little over an hour and a half, so that left lots of time for other experiences! Here’s installment #1.

Our flight left at somewhere around 7 am, so we had to get up pretty early in the morning to get to the airport on time.

Even before we left the country we had some adventure. Our flight plan took us to Toronto, with a 90 minute connection including going through customs in Toronto. Dianne needed to pick up a new birth certificate from her brother at the airport, as she’d misplaced her original and ended up having to have another one produced. Her brother met us at Terminal 2, gave Dianne a big hug and her birth certificate, and drove us to Terminal 1 to see us off. Dawn played it safe and took the shuttle instead.

Dianne and I retrieved our suitcases and before I could even make it through U.S. customs I had managed to lose my Toronto-Tampa boarding pass. I had it at one end of the room, didn’t have it at the other. How did I DO that! Who let me out of the house, anyway!

A kind U.S. customs person quickly printed out another boarding pass for me (thank goodness for electronic tickets), and I carried on to have my luggage searched. We made the connection with just enough time for a potty break, and Dawn was happy to see us again.

Just as I settled in to wait for our boarding call, I heard my name being paged. “Mrs. Cooksley, Mrs. Cooksley, could you please report to the boarding desk?”

I was flying on my husband’s Aeroplan points, banked almost a decade ago when he used to travel for a living. Since it was “just points”, he booked me in First Class for most of the flights. Dawn and Dianne travelled back in Business and I was to join them there for the Toronto-Tampa leg of our journey. What do you know, I was upgraded to Executive again! Shucks darn, I’d just have to sit up in the big seats and eat with the mucky mucks again.

We had arranged to have local Penguins Shawn and John pick us up at the airport. We had never met them, but we still hadn’t discussed how we would know each other. John had asked Shawn before we arrived, and Shawn had replied “Oh, I think we’ll figure it out.” Shawn and John are big hockey fans, having just moved down to Florida from a northern state, so all three of us wore our Calgary Flames hockey jerseys off the plane. They knew us, alright!

It had taken us all day to travel to Tampa, but we were THERE, and very excited. We all went out for dinner at Chili’s, had a great time getting to know our hosts, and hit the sack early.

I really am getting ready for work, really.

But here’s a pic of my medal 🙂

I have TONS of stuff to tell you about my trip, but will stick to the race report for the moment.

Saturday’s race started out chilly (yes, this is a Calgarian talking) and as we walked to the start I could see my breath. I was wearing shorts and my short sleeved Sugoi Toronto Penguins shirt. I also wore my bright pink Penguin Brigade hat with an outlandish pink foamy tiara on top. Several of us were wearing the tiaras, and it made us easy to spot in the crowd.

We walked about 11 blocks in the dark to the start in downtown Tampa, and found the men’s start and got in the portapotty line-up. I knew the women’s start was a couple of blocks away, but figured the men’s lines would go faster. I saw a guy in line with an inflatable airplane strapped to his head and admired his outlandish headgear.

We went over to the women’s start with about 10 minutes to spare and danced around to stay warm. There was no seeding by race time expectations, so we just lined up kind of close to the back.

Carlene (from Kanata, Ontario) and I started out together. I had only met Carlene in person the day before, but we’ve talked on e-mail lists for years. I had an idea from her recent training reports that we might be able to run together. We didn’t make any promises to each other; we had talked about running the first couple of km together, see how we felt pace-wise and then decide on the course whether to stay together or not.

We began the race as the sun came up. My hands took a good 2 miles to warm
up. Our first mile was nice and easy at 10:33, and we only walked through a few water stations. There were plenty of water stations, and we didn’t walk through all of them. Somewhere around half-way I started hunting for Gatorade at the stations and only saw water.

It was an out and back course mostly along a beautiful boulevard with water on one side and great, beautiful mansions on the other. Lots of big, beautiful trees lined the boulevard. I’ve never run a course that flat. We didn’t talk much, but pointed out things that intrigued/appealed to us along the way.

“Big tree”, I’d pant.
“Mansion”, Carlene would nod towards a well-appointed estate.

We knew from our limited conversation that we were making a good effort, yet we seemed to have lots of lung space when it came to cheering on other competitors. We saw the frontrunners coming back and cheered on the wheelchairs and elites. One guy towards the top 50 or so had dreadlocks and was wearing a full sweat suit. I saw Airplane Head and cheered him on.

There was a fairly strong headwind coming back, but once we got used to it, it was quite refreshing. It was good to have the cool breeze and not get overheated. After the turnaround I wasn’t sure if we were actually going faster, or if the wind just made it feel like we were putting in more effort. At one point I felt kind of crappy and told Carlene I felt like we had slowed down. She glanced at her Garmin and laughed as she reported that we had really sped up quite a bit! No wonder I was feeling taxed! We slowed down a tad to save our energy and I felt much better.

Now that we were on our way back, we started to look for other Penguins we knew. We cheered on our bright pink visors and tiaras whenever we saw them. Every time I gave a whoop of encouragement it reverberated through me as well, and gave me surges of strength.

We came across a Gatorade station, but I drank sparingly as I didn’t want to have to find a portapotty. Somewhere around between 10 and 12 km I did feel a little worried that I might need to urgently find a toilet, but there wasn’t one around. By the time we came across one the feeling had gone away and I was starting to focus on finishing in good time.

There was a misting station at one water stop and the volunteers had moved away from it so racers wouldn’t have to go through it, as it was still chilly. Carlene and I, crazy Canadians that we are, were plenty warm enough and detoured through the misters with big grins on our faces. We ran with polka-dotted glasses for a while, but it was a fun diversion.

In the last third or so of the race we had gradually sped up to where I didn’t think I could go much faster without a finish line nearby. We held the pace, and at around 2 km or so Carlene started telling me how little we had left to go.

Finally at around 1.2ish km left to go, the draw of the finish line was very strong and I needed to see how much kick I had left. I shouted to Carlene something about needing to speed up and she shouted back “I’ll see you at the finish!”

I called up the little CD player in my head. I put in the song that has picked up my pace several times over the last two weeks, Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time”, and cued it to the chorus. My foot turnover kicked into the beat. I passed lots of people. I was amazing. I was strong. I was…

… how did Carlene get up in front of me?

I toyed with the idea of catching up with her, but I was already using quite a bit of energy, and tried keep her on a short leash. If I caught up again, she might speed up again, and I’d be dead before we finished.

We saw the Penguin cheering section about 50m before the finish and I veered over for high-fives. Dawn had her camera out, Julie flourished her bright pink boa, and Dianne pointed to Carlene and yelled “CATCH HER!”

I slapped a couple of hands, opened up my stride all the way and zipped
right in, two seconds ahead of Carlene. What fun!

My chip time was 1:36:50, or as Carlene later broke it down for me – 3 x 32 minute 5ks back to back. Carlene and I congratulated each other. I stopped my watch, got my chip removed and received a medal. We headed towards a bridge that had food tables, and Dianne found us. We walked with her towards the start of the 5k race, which would be starting soon, and wished her well.

It was absolutely fantastic to be able to run with Carlene the WHOLE RACE and I think we each were pleased with our times, considering our dicey winter training schedules.

According to Carlene’s report, “We ran the first half of the course in 50:31 and the second half in 47:21. According to my GPS we did nice negative splits and the final kilometer was mostly sub-6 minute kilometer pace. WOW! We rocked!”

Woohoo! The sub-6 minute km at the end tells me maybe I can squeeze a little more out of my next race. Carlene’s GPS was quite addicting – I’m glad it was on her arm and not mine – I could have become totally obsessed with it.

We missed cheering in the rest of the 15k Penguins, as we were walking Dianne over to her 5k, and I desperately needed to heed the call of nature. There is something strange about wearing race clothes and hearing the star spangled banner from the portapotty… at least I wasn’t missing MY race start 🙂

By the time we made it to the 5k finish the winner was already striding in, and we enjoyed cheering in all the Penguins running and walking the 5k.

I am quite thrilled with my shiny pirate medal. I’ve run 10 and 16k races at home but never received a medal for running a race. Cool Beans!.

The rest of the weekend was quite a dream-come-true for me. I was like a big sponge, sopping up experiences with fellow penguins. I will try to post some
of my favourite impressions of that later.

Here are some pics of me during the race, if you’re curious.

I’m working on my Gasparilla Tampa 15k race report and I’ll post about what a great time I had racing, cheering and hanging with the Penguins later. For now I’ll just let you know that I’m home, feeling great, and my family seems to have survived my absence just fine.

No sunburn, no heat exhaustion, no trip to the beach, but it was perfect running weather.