- 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. :)
