I picked up Toni at 9am and we headed south. We got to Beresford around 9:30am and it was then that I realized we had 90 minutes until the race started. Ha. Oops. We hung out inside the school, catching up with friends until about 10:15 and then we headed up to do a warm up. As soon as we stepped outside, the wind had picked up and it had started to sleet/snow. WHAT. IS. THIS. Luckily within a couple of minutes, it stopped. We did a two mile shake out with a few strides thrown in. We determined it was warmer than we thought it'd be, and were thrilled we opted for capris instead of running pants.
We had time to snag a picture with the SFWR crew and our favorite speedy elite runner Bensane.
Before too long it was time to board the buses to be bussed out to the race start. They have 3 race courses for this event and pick the one that is most with the wind. There wasn't much wind, but we were bussed out to the south.
One of my running friends said she thought she'd be around 8 pace, so I thought I'd keep her in my sights. Another running friend ran exactly the pace I wanted to last year, so I'd hoped to stick with her as well. The race started, and we were off!
I got out a little too hard, probably but wanted to get ahead of the clumps of people. I felt good, but was a little startled when I glanced at my watch and it said 7:41. Ooooooh, that's too fast. I didn't consciously slow down, but I must've or my watch finally caught up to me, because I settled around an 8:22 pace. Perfect.
Once I settled in, I realized that I was feeling good and I wanted to push the pace a little bit. I went by a few of my running friends, and luckily the gal I was hoping to follow based on last year, leap frogged back in front of me. I was really pleased when mile 1 clicked off on my watch.
Mile 1 8:11
Typically I slow way down in mile 2 of a faster race because I've gone out too hard, but I kept pushing. And I was pleasantly surprised when I was feeling pretty good still. We came up on the halfway, and I did some quick math to determine that I wanted to be at or under 16:30 to shoot for that sub 33 that had become my new goal time. And then in all the math calculations, I forgot to actually look at my race time when I hit mile 2. Lolz.
Mile 2 8:10
Who is this consistent runner? Because it's surely not me.
Ok, mile 3 will hurt. It always does. During the warm up miles, Toni and I were talking about the mile. Back when I was a miler I would always go out too hard on lap one, lap two I would suffer dearly because I went out too hard, lap three I would work to make up what I lost in lap two, but the split would be basically be the same as the second because my legs were fatigued AF and then lap four I would kick it in because I was a sprinter at heart, and it's easy for my brain to think about running super hard for just a shorter period of time. I tried to embrace the hurt, knowing it was going to be hard. I was running pretty solo at this point, but thought if I could pick up the pace in this mile, I could maybe put myself in a position to out kick some of the folks in the pack of runners in front of me.
Mile 3 8:06
I started getting really hot during the final mile. The sun came out in full force shortly after the race started. For a minute I contemplated shedding the shirt because I was so warm, but I knew I couldn't finanagle my bib off in time. I wanted to drop the pace to sub 8, I was tired and hot but that's all the more reason to get it over with fast, right? The two peeks I had was at 7:48 and 7:54 pace. Uff da.
I started to get really tired with about a half mile to go. That group that I had hoped to kick and catch up to? Well they also had a kick and pulled away even further. There was a small group of two mile run/walkers that I had caught up to, so I tried to focus on them. With about .35 to go I really tried to kick to finish strong.
Mile 4 8:03 pace (my watch read 3.98, so my last split was 7:51 for an 8:03 pace, others had 3.99 or 4.0 so maybe I just killed the tangents for once in my life!)
Official time: 32:20 for 8:05 pace.
Average HR 170, Max HR 180.
Race Result
87 / 245 (35.5%)
7 / 42 (16.7%)
30 / 143 (21%)
My A goal for this race was 8:19 pace. 8:19. That's almost 15 seconds slower than I ran. To say that I'm ecstatic with my performance is an understatement. After a really rough half, where I felt like death, it really made me question my fitness and my training, and all of the not so fun thoughts that go through your brain on a bad day. This race day proved that I've been working my butt off this past year, and that I've made significant progress, and that there's still speed in these ol' legs. In October I ran a 5k in 8:11 pace, and I ran a mile farther, faster at this race. If that doesn't show progress, I don't know what will (again, saying that 100% to my brain that sometimes has doubts :P).
Toni ran a really strong race, and had time to snag some stellar finishing pictures of me. What a BRF!
After the race, we got in a one mile cool down, that felt hard. I looked down at my watch, and expected it to be at a quarter mile and it was at .08. I thought for sure my Garmin was wrong. Nope. Just had felt like forever. Uff. After the run, we went to the after party at the Bridges for free chili and chicken noodle soup. This race is great! I would highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't done it!
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