About a mile in I realized I needed to use the bathroom again, so we made a stop at the halfway point. Side note: I really need to stop eating pizza before long run/races. I love it so so much, but my stomach really hates the gluten. It's too bad, really. After that bathroom stop I felt much better, and my legs warmed up and didn't feel like lead anymore. We finished up our 3 miles and then met up with the group running the 8 miler.
We found out we were doing two double loops, which is different from last year, and really not my preference. I much prefer an out and back or even a double loop/butterfly sort of situation, but oh well. I took a GU shortly before we started. Right before we started, my stomach started to get race day nervous which is silly because we weren't racing. And it knows that. Chill out stomach. We passed right by a bathroom early on but I chose to keep going thinking my stomach would settle down. We were going way too fast off the bat, so we had to focus to keep at our 10:30 long run pace.
Eventually we settled in and had a nice little pack of runners right with us, all getting their long runs in as well. YAY! Team work makes the dream work.
1. 10:22
2. 10:25
During the race, I told Toni that the plan was 3 miles at long run pace, 2 miles around 10 pace, and then we'd cut down the last 3 miles--9:40s, 9:20s, 9s. Now that I'm looking back at my race plan, apparently we were supposed to go more aggressively than that. Oops. Fail on my part.
I debated stopping to use a bathroom in this stretch but felt like I could keep going, and the bathroom was quite a ways off of the trail. We ran up on one of my co-worker's daughter and chatted with her for a couple of miles as well.
3. 10:20
Once it was time to pick up the pace a bit, I kind of felt like a jerk, because we started passing people who had passed us to start. Normally I get a burst of energy passing people in races, but since I knew a bunch of people were doing this as a long run, and I knew most of them, I felt way less competitive about it, and more of a jerk. Ha. During mile 4, I finally snagged a bathroom stop, and was quickly in and out while Toni refilled our water bottles. She's the best. I took another GU around the 4 mile mark (7 miles overall).
4. 10:04
5. 9:50
I could hardly believe it when we were down to our last 3 miles. They had gone SO FAST. But honestly any time I run with Toni the miles fly by, but there were so many more people and everyone was cheering and high fiving as we went along. It was awesome. We were picking up the pace, but it didn't feel as hard as I thought it would, which was a good sign!
6. 9:38
7. 9:17
Based on our tempo run earlier this week, where we ran 16, 12, and 8 minute stretches at tempo pace, and it was HARD, I was really worried about running the last 3 down to tempo pace. 27 minutes of tempo seems way harder than three shorter sets with a jogging break in between, ALSO doing it at the end of an 11 miler seems EXTRA HARD. But we kept chatting and talking through it like it was NBD.
The final mile I wanted to get as close to 9 or under as possible, while not all out sprint/racing it. A gal that had been right on our heels for a few miles prior to the finish flew by us during the final mile, and I really really really wanted to chase her, so I had to remind myself over and over that this wasn't a race. Dang competitive brain in there. We kept to our plan of comfortably hard and then really strides out the final little turn/stretch. I told Toni to go ahead and that I'd chase her.
8. 8:50
I finished in 1:19:22 for a pace of 9:55.
It was a great run, and I would highly recommend the 605 Series to any runner that wants to race or do a supported long run for their summer training!
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