Pan Am Cup - Mexico!!!

Whew!  What a trip!  What a race!  What an experience!  So much pre, during and post race I barely know where to start.  Strap in, this could be a long one... 

I guess I'll start with the time around the race itself.  Getting to Lazaro Cardanas is not an easy feat.  It required two-ish days of travel with staying the night in Houston.  I've never really broken travel up like that and I'm not a huge fan of it.  I know why we did it,and it made sense, but I like to just get there.  Our flight from Houston to Mexico City was late and we had to rush to make our connection, and while we made it our bags didn't.  They showed up the next day, but unfortunately a bunch of my teammates bags were opened and stuff was stolen.  That's the downside of traveling with USA on your bag, everyone thinks we have awesome stuff, which we do tend to have cool stuff, don't get me wrong.  Everyone was well prepared though and had their racing kit on their carry on so nothing catastrophic. 

With silver medalist Joanna!  She's very active in the fight for women's equality in the 50K.  She raced so smart and hard!

It was fantastic to see all my friends again, both domestic and international!  Over the 9 US teams I've made I've met so many amazing people, it's great to be able to see them again.  The city was interesting, we were about a 10 minute walk from the course and from where lunch and dinner were held.  I didn't end up going to do anything touristy like see the beach, but that's okay.

Luckily they bumped the start time up 30 minutes, which meant getting there in the wee hours when things were calm and quiet.  I love starting off races this way.  

The course was nice, a 2K loop with slight rise and fall.  In the morning there was shade, but by about 10 or so there basically wasn't any left.   I've done somewhere around 20 different 50Ks and I can say that this was the hottest 50K I've ever done!

I'm not a great photographer and this was just off my phone, but the moon was amazing. 

The race itself.  I knew it was going to be brutal.  I spent 2.5 weeks in Arizona training to try and get some heat training, but it never got super hot there, still better than at home where I was training the week of the race and it snowed.  So I knew my body was not going to enjoy the heat at all. 

I started off very easy.  I honestly thought it was going to be easy enough.  I felt great thanks to our awesome physio, everything was working super smooth.  Then about 8K I got bit by a bug.  I have no idea what bug it was.  About a K later my hands went fuzzy numb, then a little bit after that my eyesight basically went fuzzy and dark.  I could sort of see where I was going, but not really well.  I could at least see well enough to turn, other than that it was just go straight and find the bottles that were being handed to me.  My heart rate went up about 15-20 beats a minute.  It was wild.  I really hope to never experience that again!  That lasted for somewhere around 8-10K I think?   Then little by little I started to feel better and my heart rate calmed.  I picked things up a little, which in hindsight was probably a mistake.  Because after a while I most definitely hit a wall.  My whole body  had locked up.  When I saw the massage therapist later he said my entire back was one big solid mass of not moving, going all the way around the front and constricting my breathing. 

Sure, there were times where dropping out crossed my mind.  Let's be honest, it crosses most everyone's mind at some point, that's a 50K!  But I wanted to finish really, really bad.  So I just kept trucking.  I interacted with the crowd.  I cheered for my competition, I smiled as much as I could. 

And I finished!  I think it was my second slowest time ever, but I finished.  There were a lot of guys who didn't finish.  I finished.  I was stronger than the 50K. 

There's no way I could've done it without Emmanuel Corvera!  The day after he rocked his 20K he came out and did my aid.  Talk about amazing and selfless!  He was always right there ready to give me what I needed and with a supportive word or two or ten.  Tom and Susan were right there cheering for me, making me smile and being awesome!  People who haven't done a 50K don't realize how important the aid person is.  Really my success is their success, because especially in that heat there is no way I could've done it off just water.  Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you! 

Our physio, Ed, is a magician!  Seriously, he works miracles!  And our massage therapist had the magic touch.  They got me loose and ready to go and got me moving again after the race.  I'm so thankful and appreciative of them.

Me and my athletes.  Super proud of Lydia and AJ!

One thing I'm super proud of is that of the 7 50K athletes on Team USA I coach two of them!  I'm so proud of AJ and Lydia!  Lydia did a PB in that nasty weather!!!!  Can you believe it!!!!  She raced hard and most importantly she raced smart and with patience!   AJ suffered in the heat, but did not give up, making sure to finish and doing everyone proud.  I'm super proud of both those guys! 

Sixteen women started the race, 15 finished.  The one who didn't was a DQ, so she didn't voluntarily drop out.  That makes me so happy!  Take that all those people who say women aren't tough enough to do a 50K!!!  There were some really smart races, and some not as smart races, but everyone kept pushing and fighting. 

I think this is long enough for a read.  I'll write another one soon about some of the demons that were vanquished ;) 

Keep walking everyone!  Find your dream and go after it!

Might have gotten a little sun???