FLORIDA!!! BEFORE THE CRUISE THIS TIME...NUMBER 29!

Well, I did figure out how to make biegnets and they were excellent! I have made them 3 times since New Orleans. Brian and I decided that we would go on a cruise this year with some of our friends that we know through Chuck and Beth. We had 5 couples all together and we were going on a 5 day cruise that left on a Monday (02/15/2016) out of Fort Lauderdale and I quick-like, jumped online and found a race on the Sunday before (02/14/2016) so that I could get it out of the way and then have a great time not worried about racing at the end of a cruise like I did in Texas (bad idea). The race was early, 6 am, and Brian did a fantastic job of getting us in a hotel that was literally at the end of the race. Upon reading my race instructions, I found that there would be no packet pick up on Sunday, so we arrived in Fort Lauderdale in the early afternoon and beat feet to the convention center to pick up the packet and off to the Hotel we went. We went to the outside restaurant and had lunch, fish tacos, YEAH!!! And I spent the rest of the afternoon slogging water and meeting up with our group. We were delighted to learn that Clive and Christine(friends from England) had snuck in to join us on the cruise and made ours a group of 12. We also met with Joanne and Dave Johnson, who are super nice and added a lot to our fun. We did a lot of walking and my back was bugging me, so we decided to take the golf cart back from our dinner up north on the A1A where Chuck, Beth, Mike, Rachel, Clive and Christine were staying. I’m not sure where Joanne and Dave were staying. The morning of the race I did my usual prerace food and we took the shuttle bus from outside of our hotel and drove to the start. They had the race start set up weird with the port-a-lets right in the middle of the lineup. Odd…it went off on time and I felt great!!! I was going along pretty good until about 6 and the back pain started and by 10 it was really crappy. I just kept on going and finished!!! All our cruise buddies except Mark and Sue who were due to come in on a later flight were at the finish and that was cool. The scenery was so beautiful with much of the race running along the A1A highway in Fort Lauderdale. I was super lucky, because it wasn't super sunny and there was a solid breeze blowing the whole time. There was a great after race party with beer and food and music and though breezy we hung out there for a while and enjoyed beer and companionship. Later that day I got my results. I certainly wasn’t speedy, but with significant back pain I was able to finish 1284 of 4187 overall, 57 of 184 in 50-54 AG, with a finishing time of 02:03:45, that is a 9:27 pace and I’ll take it. Next race, if my back can take it is Oklahoma in April.