Almost through with hell month

April has probably been the roughest work month I have had in a long time, hence the slacking on the blog front. Other than a ton of meetings/traveling, there is nothing too much to report. Last week I was in Puerto Vallarta with our divisional team, which means late nights, heavy food, and long days. I did get a full week of sea level/beach training in, which is always fun! We made it out one night to one of the local bars where I met some new big, sweaty friends.

Yesterday was my first race finally! It is a big race and ended up selling out, so I am glad I planned ahead and signed up. The plan was to run the 3 miles to the start, run the race and then do an easy jog home. There was a last minute change to the course due to the president coming through the area, which made for a difficult run to the start. As I was coming up to the starting area I realized that there were metal detectors everywhere, so we had to go around the park and come back. This added on another mile plus to my warmup. As I have said in the past, the races here are very well organized and well run and the volunteers are great, however I did have one issue this year - heavy human traffic. I know it was due to the last minute course change, so it really couldnt have been avoided. The first mile was run on residential streets instead of the main road here, cutting the size to about half of what we normally would have, causing a huge jam. I had a few people around me stumble and fall and noone could really pick up the pace much faster than a fast walk until we hit the 1.5 K mark. After that we spread out a bit and were able to pick up the pace. I was feeling good really the entire time with no stomach issues (I drank only water at each station) or breathing problems. As soon as we hit 8K, the traffic started up again. The runners converged with the 5K walkers and there was once again a cluster that we couldnt get around. Most of the runners started having to walk unfortunately, but again I think this was due to the course change. I wasnt too worried about it since I never expect fast races in Mexico City and this was really just a tempo run in the middle of my long run for the week, but there were a few of angry people shoving their way through. After the race I ran home weaving around even more barriers that had been set up for whatever was going on. 14 miles later I was home where I parked it on the couch to watch the Hills marathon.