The good thing of being married to Yano, is that no matter how bad your race goes, the Hernandez-Concepcion family always brings home the bacon.  No matter how bad you suck, she’s always there to make a personal best, get on the podium, or at least bring home $200 just for trying.  Often, all three.

Last Sunday Yano and I ran the half-marathon at the Panama City Marathon.  Yanory, aka “Hitler”, has been training me to improve my pathetic time of 1:49.  If pain is in any way related to performance, I’m bound to run 4 minute miles any day.  Because up to a week ago, every thing south of my belly button was hurting, and I do mean everything.

Before, I publish the results let me explain something about athletes the world over.  With few exceptions, an athlete could’ve always done better, and he/she’ll take any opportunity to explain why he/she didn’t.  Endurance athletes are even worse, because they can seldom blame anybody else, so they have to get even more creative.

The first 24 hours after an event is spent explaining to everyone you know why you didn’t do as well as expected.  Typical excuses include: “I had fried chicken last night”.  “I have this pain in my meta-blastic-tendoniting-ligament-hoobah.”  “My shoe-laces came untied 17 times”.  “I couldn’t sleep my usual 12 hours before an event”.  You get the picture…

At first, you see these excuses, as just that– excuses.  But after years of training, you start seeing an inkling of truth in them all, and you start coming up with what I call “normalized times”.  These are the race times you could’ve had, had everything gone according to plan.

So without further ado, here is my race time for the half-marathon… well first, let’s normalize things a bit.

• We were out sightseeing the night before, came back late, and I could only sleep 5 hours. (1:30– deduct 1 minute 30 seconds from the finishing time)
• Had dinner late, at 9pm (1:30)
• …ham and cheese sandwich (1:00)
• …with Mayo (0:30)
• Had diarrhea 2 days before race (1:00 because of dehydration)
• It was 90F (4:00)
• …with 90% humidity (3:00)
• Shoelaces became untied twice (0:30)
• Yano’s cousins didn’t pour cold water over me at KM 10 as promised (0:30)
• Time spent opening gel during race (0:30)
• …dropped the gel (0:30)
• 4 overpasses at 7% inclination (1:30)
• Water-in-a-bag at oasis’ required much biting (1:00)
• Made a wrong turn (1:00)
• I couldn’t pace myself because KMs or miles were not marked (2:00)
• Water I poured over myself weighed my clothes down (2:00)
• Mosquitoes while I slept (1:00)
• Jetlag (1:00– Panama is one hour behind Puerto Rico)

So… even though I ran a 1:46, my normalized time is more like a 1:22, which is a quite respectable improvement.  Had everything gone according to plan, I would’ve easily beat Yano, who only did a 1:27 and came in third amongst the women.

So yeah, even though I technically ran a 1:22, Yano’s performance was much more appreciated, and she managed to get on the podium, and bag $300 to pay for her airfare.  I, on the other hand, will have to keep my day job.

Damn ham sandwich!