The Baton Rouge Beach Half-Marathon would be my 29th and my final race of 2008. To think, no swimming or biking to precede the run? I surely was gonna smoke this race... or not. :)

I've been officially back 'in-training' for a week now for next year's 70.3s, and on a broader scope the 140.6 full courses close to the end of next year. My tri coach frowned on it, but I strayed a bit from my training and ran my last race of the year on Saturday morning, the Baton Rouge beach half-marathon. He made me set some goals for the race, which if you know me, I was more than happy to do.

- Goal 1 would be to run the entire race without stopping and walking.
- Goal 2 would be to break 2 hours.
- Goal 3 would be to not have any gastric funhouse events.

Well I ended up meeting two of my goals. Since goal 2 and 3 depended on each other I bet you can guess which ones I wasn't able to meet. :)

I started out with a brisk 8:45 pace keeping my heart-rate in check at 125 bpm. Since I was going to treat this as a training race to some extent I never wanted to break the 135bpm threshold throughout the race. That never was a problem. The weather was a bit cold to start the race at around 45 degrees but it warmed up quickly as I reached the first mile marker. I really need to re-calibrate my watch because it's still off by around 60 feet. It may not seem like much but that 60 feet adds up to half a mile or more over a long run. The course meandered through the neighborhoods that surround the campus of L.S.U. before turning back and heading around Death Valley (Tiger Stadium) and onto the L.S.U. campus. I was very familiar with most of the course because I trained for my marathon in January on much of the same route.

I felt good and maintained my pace and most importantly I wasn't experiencing any gastric discomfort... That is until I hit the 5th mile...

Oh the lovely mile 5! It doesn't matter if I am training or racing, mile 5 always seems to be the breaking point where i either am able to pass the threshold of gastic distress and continue on with no problems, or I have 'the emergency'. I passed a perfectly good, unoccupied, port-o-joy at mile 4 and continued on towards my goal of sub-2 hours. Mile 5 came and the first twinges of gastric discomfort took hold. I was franticly looking for a port-o-joy around each corner as I skirted the lakes on sorority and fraternity row. No joy. I was in 45 second emergency mode when I neared the land bridge, and no-mans land as far as I was concerned. At least around franternity row there were bushes. :) I had one final hope, as my 45 second countdown timer was reaching the critical point, of a Methodist church that I noticed had a few cars in the parking lot. I left the course and ran for the church which was probably the fastest I ran all day. Thank the Lord that the door was unlocked! I entered the building and was hopping around like Forrest Gump after drinking the sodas in the White House. I saw a nice lady that was setting up some tables for what I assumed was a Christmas party and asked her if I could use her bathroom. She saw I was in distress, smiled and pointed the way to restroom. Ever see the movie Dumb and Dumber? You remember the scene with Jeff Daniels? :)

So I emerged from the bathroom after 20 minutes, thanked the kind lady, and ran back out onto the course. So goal 2 and 3 were officially done.

I had to stop again at a port-o-joy around mile 10 for some more of the gastric funhouse and then finished the race in just under 2:25.00. Oh well. 1 outta 3 goals would have to do.

So that's it for this year. It's been one of the most amazing years of my life and I've enjoyed sharing it with you guys. I'm concentrating on only a handful of "A" races next year with most of them being long course tris. I've got some pretty lofty goals to meet and with a ton of training I know that I will have no problems meeting them.

Keep on truckin'!
Chad