Rob had mentioned Brookings to me several months ago. I was pretty excited about going as it was another state I could mark off my list. I had looked at the elevation map and it was pretty flat, though it was at 1600 feet of elevation. I typically run at 1100-1200 here in the Ozarks. We left early on Friday morning and we knew it was going to be a long drive since it was 615 miles. As usual we enjoyed some movies and our typical sophomoric humor on the way up there. We stopped at the border to take a picture of the South Dakota sign. Rob had booked the accomodations for him, me and his friend Mike McMahon.
We arrived a decent time and Mike arrived shortly thereafter. We went to the expo and picked up our packets and walked to a restaurant nearby to taste some of the local flavor. We could tell the weather was going to be shape up to be for a cool race morning even though there had been some higher temps in the region recently.
I was cautiously optimistic about the event from a time perspective. My plan was to do a 5:1. I started out a little too fast and Rob kept seeing me on the course and telling me that I needed to slow it down a little. He was running with Mike and I was so cold at the start I was just trying to stay warm. Sometimes it is so hard to make yourself slow down. I got to 13.1 after a quick stop at the port-a-potty. The course was decent but there were a lot of curbs and sidewalks that we had to step up and down on. My optimistic goal was to run a 4:10 or better. By the time I got to 23, I realized I had slowed down too much to accomplish that. After the race I scored some chocolate milk and tried to fight off the nausea. We headed back to the hotel for a quick shower and started our journey home. The swag was nice, but the course was nothing special.
