Race Report: Washington Pavilion 5k

Attention South Dakota weather:  Please pick a temperature and stick to it.  Seriously.  This week was beautiful/glorious weather.  Wednesday we had a high of 91 degrees.  That's insanity.  This morning at 9am at the start of the race:  38 degrees (probably 30 with wind chill).  LAME.  There is no reason that the temp should be less than HALF of what it was 3 days ago.  With that off of my chest, I would like to continue on.

This is a race that I've never participated in before.  It's one of the smallest races I've done so far, and officially the first one I've done that didn't have a gun at the start.  They really didn't even give people a chance to shuffle up to the starting line (there was a 10 minute stretching session prior to the event) before yelling out "

On your marks, get set, GO!"  Whoa.  Wait.  What?  I don't even have my headphones in yet!!  Luckily I slipped by some people to work my way towards the front and remembered to start my watch at the mat.  The race started downtown and actually ran through downtown for the first few blocks until we got on to the trail.  After the first block there wasn't much congestion, which was awesome.  I felt like I was flying, but in a good way.  

I had meant to ask a volunteer if the miles were marked, but forgot to do that prior to the race.  Something about knowing or not knowing whether to expect the markers helps me out for some reason.  Fortunately there was a 1/2 mile marker, which was technically the 1 mile turn around point:  3:50.  Holy buckets, you need to slooooow down or you won't make it through the race.  I slowed down just a bit, but really wanted to run right around 8 minute miles.  

Mile 1 marker (aka Mile 2 walk turn around point):  9:07.  WHAT?!?!?  Time to pick up the pace a little I guess.  The middle two miles were on the bike trails, which I love.  We got to run over this adorably quaint bridge, which was probably the highlight of the run.  Unfortunately a little over halfway done I started to feel the onset of the ab pain from the St. Patty's Day 5k.  :(  It started off as a dull ache until we started to have some small rolling hills.  Every decline in the trail caused more and more pain.  I tried to run while stretching my side with my right arm in the air, which helped for a few seconds.  Finally I decided to stop and really stretch it to see if that would help.  I stopped for maybe 5-7 seconds and when I started up again I couldn't tell a difference.  I thought about quitting.  Is it worth it to continue to this race where I will undoubtably do bad and further injure this stupid muscle?

Luckily while I was having all this inner dialogue, the time and distance kept passing by, and I decided I would just run as hard as I could without too much pain.  I ran hard up the inclines because my side didn't hurt and just winced down the downhill parts.  I kept thinking that I had to make it to the final 6 blocks or so because I knew by the race map that the end was all uphill.  I pushed it as hard as I could for the last mile and thought that maybe, just maybe I could PR by a second or two.  At this point I would take it.  On the final stretch I could make out the clock 2x:30 (or some odd seconds) with some yahoo standing in the way of the minutes column.  The loverboy was cheering with a block to go and I just sprinted as hard as I could after I saw him.  I crossed the line, stopped my watch, and immediately bent over to ease the pain.

One of my friends had come to watch and cheer for me and brought her two little boys who came running up and hugged me.  With all the excitement, I forgot to look at my watch!  25:29.  ????!!!!!  YAAAAAAY!  Official time:  25:27.  21 seconds off my best.  :)  =  GARMIN.

Now scroll back up to that picture up there and see who's nestled into the picture in between my shoes.  Hello lova.  Taylor got me a post-race latte and took me to the local running store to get my new love.  Unfortunately they didn't carry the green one that I had my heart set on.  The guy said he would special order it for me and even give me a discount, but it wouldn't be here until Wednesday at the earliest.  :(  I settled for the black, because I've waited for too long as it is for this puppy.  PLUS the dude still gave me a discount.

As far as the ab issue goes....here are my thoughts:  I have another 5k in two weeks and the only time I've had this pain is during the last 5k (6 weeks ago) and during two of my interval workouts over the last 6 weeks.  I think I'm going to swap out my remaining interval workout with a tempo run, and then take the six weeks between my next race and the start of my 1/2 marathon training program off from intervals (just inserting tempo runs for my weekly speed workouts).  But this sucks.  That's the single training run I look forward too because I just wanna go FAST.  Hopefully it'll do the trick though.  If anyone else has any suggestions let me know. 

Let's ignore the horrible facial expression here and instead 

choose to focus on my rippling calve muscle.  Um.  Ya.  

Totally makes up for the I-am-moments-from-death-face.