Woke up in the morning fully intending to compete in the Wente Road Race in Livermore, but my legs would have nothing to do with it.  I decided that a nice open water swim would suffice, so I drove over the San Mateo Bridge and signed up for a nice swim in the slough around Foster City.  The race was a mile long with approximately 100 competitors.  I jumped in sans wetsuit and finsihed 16th overall and 3 in my age group.  24:02 was my time.  Felt great, not to cold.

http://www.bostonmarathon.org/

Boston Marathon the granddaddy of all marathons.  There are only 2 marathons in the world you have to qualify for to participate.  Boston and the Olympics.  The race takes place on Patriot's day in
Boston, on a Monday.  The race course is lined from start to finish with spectators.  Memorable areas are Wellsleny College, Newton (Heartbreak Hill), Boston College and the finish down Boylston Street with thousands cheering you on is something anyone who runs marathons should experience at least once.  I have been fortunate to being able to experiecne this for the second time. It really hurt, those last few miles but I wqs determined to finish no matter what! My time was sloer than I had wanted but I crossed the finish line and received my finishers medal and it was so worth it. 

I have never been a strong climber but Copperopolis worked into my calender nicely, so I signed up. My goal was to try and stay with the group as long as possible and I made it half way up the first climb. I have the "Boston Marathon" next weekend and maybe shouldn't have run 9 miles on Friday before Copperopolis.  Oh well, its a long year.

When I got to the top of the climb, I started picking off riders in front of me.  I would see a rider in the distance and put my head down and work on getting up to them and see if they wanted to work to get to the next guy up the road.  Most did not want to work or couldn't.  So the first lap was spent passing many riders.  The downhill was crazy bumpy, but I passed a lot of people on that section also.  Came throught the start/finish area and thought about packing it it.  It is a hard course, but I decided that with my overall goal for my 50 races, quitting isn't really an option.

So off I go and climb again for my 2nd and last lap.   Got passed by only 4 or 5 riders up the hill and then caught all but 1 on the top of the ridge.  then 2 guys who got shelled from another group come by and I hook on with them for most of the ridge section.  Then the lead group of the 55+ come by on their 3rd lap (I think) and the 3 of us hook on the back of this group.  Mac is in the group and I ride for a few miles with them watching this race unfold.  No one in that group was talking and the pace while managable was fast.  I was glad to sit in the back and get the draft for the last part of the ride, it was windy on top of the ridge and being out there solo was no fun.  When we got to the last hill before the downhill section the pace really picked up and I dropped off the back but only by about 50 yards. When we crested the top and started heading downhil, I pedaled hard to try and catch up to see the final sprint of this lead group ,but to no avail they were really fast going downhill too!   Anyway, I ended up passing a couple of riders from yet another group and they latched on to me.  In the last kilometer, I picked up the pace to try and beat these riders to the line, we dropped the third guy and I tried to sprint to beat the other guy to the line but he gapped me by about 1 bike length.

It was fun and rewarding to challenge myself on a course like Copperopolis.  The best thing about all these different races I am doing is the varied terrain and the beauty of California. View race website here.