When I woke up the morning of the race in Big Bear, I could just feel the day was going to be perfect for a race. After my shower and bowl of oatmeal, I headed out the door. Dawn was just breaking and the air was nice and crisp. As I started my drive from Fawnskin and around the lake to the Village, it began to sprinkle. This confirmed my feeling of a great day to race. While the start of the race was dry, the great day feeling held true. From the start, the climbing began. I kept it easy and "cruised" up the first climb. Near the top was a King of the Mountain banner for the 30K runners. At this point I picked up the pace and continued on through the first aid station. From this point until about mile 26, I ran alone. To my surprise, everything felt great. That is until I hit a long single track climb that I thought was much shorter. Feeling strong, I pushed the climb, but it continued on, and on, and on. Realizing too late that I just made a grave error, I slowed down. At the top of the climb, my legs were burning. I decided to take the pace down a notch to try and recover. About three miles later, 2nd and 3rd place caught up to me. I had no choice, but to pick the pace back up a bit. Not feeling like I recovered much from my mistake, I pushed on and stayed ahead of 2nd. On the single track decent, I kicked a root, slid and rolled. This seemed to be the last wheel to fall off. From here I struggled to keep the pace up. We had to run the long single track climb that I made my mistake on earlier for a second time. This time I would take it easy. Well, really, I had no choice but to take it easy. By now, first place was out of sight and it was me and 3rd. I was able to put a small gap between me and 3rd on the climb, but not enough to gain back the 1st position. The remainder of the race was survival. I kept my pace as respectable as I could for the final decent. At the last turn, I looked across and saw that 3rd was not in sight. Believing I had 2nd lock up now, I was going to cruise in, however, something told me not to. I picked up the pace slightly. As I got closer to the finish, I picked it up again. When I heard cheering behind me, I thought,"should I be worried", but I didn't hear footsteps. I still picked up the pace a little more. As I was crossing the finish line, now I heard footsteps! 3rd place was right there! I still crossed the line ahead of him by a mere second!
When I crossed the line, both of my boys were right there. They came running up to me, excited as could be, yelling, "Dad! You Got Second!" They grabbed me and hugged me. This brought tears to my eyes, seeing my boys so excited.
My goal for this race was to place in the top three. I placed second and couldn't be happier with that.
