Race Report: Avera Race Against Breast Cancer 5k

Will she or won't she meet her goal of 25 flat?  :)  If you read the previous post there are a few things going against me achieving my goal:

• horrible allergy cold/not being able to breathe properly out of my mouth or nose
• not doing any speed work for the last two weeks
• strained ab that's apparently still strained

Friday night we went to Taylor's hometown for a friend's college graduation party.  Of course I was the only one not enjoying any spirits, but I made up for it by the delicious pizza I consumed.  Luckily, we came home pretty early and were in bed around 11pm.  Unfortunately I was really nervous and couldn't sleep.  I updated my playlist on my iPod.  Double and triple checked that my clothes were laid out, and checked my alarm yet again.  Setting mine for 6:10am and Tay's for 6:25am.  I woke up at 6:25am and freaked out because neither alarm had gone off.  Of course I panicked, because I only wake up that early so I can eat breakfast, and be ready to run at 8am.  After getting myself severely worked up, I realized it was only 2:25am.  Gah.  I'll let you guess how peaceful my slumber was after that.

When I finally did wake up, I was excited because there were no thunder storms (as there had been all day before).  I ate some food, got dressed, and resumed being nervous, but still not sure why.  We got to the race and I saw a bunch of people that I knew were running the race, which is cool and unlike most others races where I know maybe one other person.  We had to take a "team" picture since I was running for my gym, and then we stretched our freezing cold muscles.

A girl from my high school who was actually on my 1600 m relay and 800 m relay school record teams, was running her first 5k, so she was my partner in crime.  Because it's such a big race (I've heard between 800 and 1200 for the 5k plus the 10k started with us also) I squirmed my way to the front of the line.  I must've been right where I needed to be, because there were only a few people I had a to zoom past at the beginning.

I started off feeling great.  :)  Legs and lungs felt great.  I knew that the primary downhills of the race were at the beginning and middle of mile two, and hoped that I could get through those without the ab flaring up.  

Mile 1:  I started off strong knowing I needed 8:05 pace to get my 25:00 goal.

7:48.  

Holy buckets!  I was now kind of concerned about dying the rest of the race because I went out so fast.

Mile 2:  I slowed up a bit because of my crazy fast first mile, and also slowed down on the downhills to try to prevent stupid ab from rearing its head.

8:06

At the turn around, I noticed not many women were ahead of me, so I was super excited and motivated to keep going strong.  Halfway point was 12:25, so I also thought I would achieve my goal, but knew it depended on if my stomach started hurting or not.

Mile 3:  The first part of the mile was upset, so I pushed hard telling myself I was STRONG up those darn hills.  I don't have these strong (read:  LARGE) thighs for looks they're for speed and strength!  Ha.  Once the hills were over, it was pretty much flat to the finish, and of course, the ab pain I had been dreading started to creep up.  But according to Marvin I only had .5 miles left to go.  In my head I figuring ~4 minutes of pain.  Totally do able.  I ran as hard as I could, having to grab my side and just squeeze hard to alleviate some pain at one point and set my sights on some dude I thought I could beat.  Out of nowhere comes this chickadee who looks like she's doing a 200m not a 5k, and he speeds up to keep from getting beat by her.

7:55

.1:  .26

Once I stopped and looked at my watch, and the timer, I was ecstatic!  24:16 unofficially.  Not only did I meet my goal, I SHATTERED IT.  But my standards anyway.  :)  Officially 24:18.  A 1:09 PR from 2 weeks ago.  I found Taylor and he was super excited for me, saying he didn't expect me to come in so soon as he knew I was shooting for 25 flat-ish and did NOT sound very confident about that prior to the race.  I even asked him if he would still love me if I did not PR, his answer was yes.  Thank goodness.  :)

I was really excited to see how I placed in my division, as I had been placing top 10 in the last two races, but had so much of a better time this time around.  Stupid them, they only had M overall and W overall for their division.  I got 31 out of 629 women!  Whoo, and I MAY have counted for my unofficial "age group" place:  9 out of 114.

It was a GREAT GREAT GREAT day.  I think I'll plan on doing one more before I start training for my half to give my ab a little more time to heal, and then will shoot to come in below 24.  Why not?  Right?  :)  I also realized that I push myself harder in larger races.  It probably helps that I knew so many people there also and did NOT want to run slow in front of them.  I think I had a smile plastered on my face from 8:30am to 3am when I went to bed.  :)