Race Report: 605 Race Series 4 Mile

I woke up at 6am to eat some breakfast and head to town to do an early packet pick up and some warm up miles. I was really close to hitting 100 miles for the month of July so that helped me get there to do a couple of extra. I picked up my bib and headed out. It was so thick and muggy, and my head was completely full of mucus. Did that paint a vivid enough picture for you? Uff.

The warm up was a complete slog and I ended up only going 1.5 miles and being completely drenched. I did manage to get some monster snot rockets blown out during the warm up so I could breathe a little bit.

We all lined up for the race announcements and I was excited to see some of my runner friends. I found a couple of pals I thought I could try to stay with and/or keep in my sights based on our recent 5k race series times. 

We started out and I glanced down at my watch a couple minutes in to it to make sure I hadn't gone out too fast (as I tend to do, 7's? um... no thanks, not right now!) and was shocked that my labored pace was an 8:40. Uh... according to Mr. McMillan Running Calculator that should be pretty doable based on my 5k paces. Shoooooot. 

Mile 1 8:53

From there I decided just to run comfortably hard, and maybe my legs would loosen up and have some speed in them the second half of the race! (Spoiler alert: they did not have any speed or additional pep in the second half). I tried to just stay competitive in that I worked to catch people that were loosing steam in front of me.

 

Mile 2 9:15

At the turn around I glanced at my watch and saw 18:20, so my new goal was to finish around 36:40, as I knew I was fading and thought that might help me hunker down a bit. I leap frogged with a couple of gals during this stretch before one finally left me in her dust.

Mile 3 9:09

I tried to reel in a male and female that were in my sights during the final mile and tried to kick with .7 to go in the race. My mile split will tell you how slowly I must've been going for that first .3 miles. My legs just felt like lead.

 

Looking at my running form in the race pictures, I can totally tell why it felt like garbage. For some reason I've reverted back to my bad non-glute using running form. I like to refer to his as my sad panda form. Uff, my hamstrings ache just looking at it.

I finished the last .25 pretty strong, and even had a 7:20 something final kick.

Mile 4 9:08

.05 :21

My final time was 36:48 for a pace of 9:06. A PR. (auto PR, but whatevs)

 

Great start to a race series even if it was a last than fun race performance! That's a heckuva lot faster than I would've run on my own on Sunday in the humidity with a head cold!

Coming Out of Blog Retirement

**wipes months of dust off of my Macbook's keyboard**

Whoa.

It's been awhile. I've written a million blog posts on my head, but never got around to actually typing any of them. Shortly after Kyle and I got married, we found out that both of my parents had cancer. Whoa. Life, you're being a bitch right now. To say that my life was turned upside down and thrown against a wall would be an understatement. In the last 9 1/2 months they've both gone from very, very sick, to okay, and back and forth a few more times. Exhausting. Especially when you're a fixer and you can't do anything to fix it.

I finally started running again back in March, shortly after my mom's last stay in the hospital when I realized I wasn't taking the best care of myself. Apparently working out and eating healthy is a lot better option for you than just eating your feelings, who would've thought? (It's not as delicious of an option, to be clear.)

Somewhere in that time frame I have fallen back in love with running a little bit, in large part thanks to the running groups that I belong to. When I first started running again sometimes it was only the Wednesday night group runs at 605 Running Co. There are several weeks where I had 2.5-3 miles for my weekly mileage and they were there.

And then this spring I started joining some Sioux Falls Area Running Club folks for a weekly Thursday night trail run. LOVE. It's so beautiful out there you don't realize that you're running 12 minute miles to avoid breaking your neck/ankle/leg and fast hiking UP the hills because you have nothing like that anywhere else in town.
























I've also met so many awesome runner friends through Sioux Falls Women Run. Including some that live in my new town! (oh did I mention? Kyle and I bought a house! We live in the 'burbs now.) There's always someone inviting people on their runs, and meetups all over town to help us get our miles in.



I'm so grateful to my new found running family because the therapy I get from running really helps me be a better member of my real family, and the struggles that we're working through.