Happy Birthday To Me!

Saturday I did a very light two mile run with Dr. Z. roaddogging. I practiced my kick by taking it up from 8:40 to 8:00 in the last mile. I was NOT happy with the humidity and prayed it would go down before Sunday's race.

Unfortunately not only was it humid enough to make sleeping less than ideal, the humidity increased Sunday morning, with gray overcast skies and not a single breeze. I bumped into the IronFamily, with IronDad doing the 10K and IronKid and EltonJohn doing the 5K with me.

I hit the first mile at 7:20, perfectly on pace for a PR. There was some guy breathing down my neck but I did my best to ignore him and just do my own thing. He passed me at the turnaround, but I passed him again shortly after and by the two-mile mark he was far, far behind me. (Basically he exhausted himself trying to catch me.) I can't remember my mile two split, but it was basically still on track. Unfortunately I had to rachet back at that point because I was starting to get a stitch from working so hard to breathe in the soupy air. I got confused at one fork that wasn't marked and had to ask a runner which way, but made up the time with a short sprint.

I came through at 23:47 and confirmed with Dr. Z that I was the second female runner in, beaten only by IronKid. (One thing I love about turnaround races is not only do you know how far you have left, you get a very good idea of your place in the race.)

I was very disappointed by my time, which should have been a minute shorter, but IronKid said her time was off by a minute as well, as was the lead guy's, who runs at the college level and can hit a 15-minute 5K. He actually said that he thought the course was more like 3.2 miles. (I later plugged 3.2 miles into my online log and it computed my pace at a more-accurate sounding 7:24. Yes, a tenth of a mile makes that big a difference.)

There was a long wait afterwards as not only did we have to wait for the 10-K runners to come in, they didn't use chips and had to tabulate everything manually. I used the time to do my cooldown jog and socialize while Dr. Z worked the finish line.

They finally started the door prizes. It was one of those "Everyone wins something" deals, so it took FOREVER. I one a book on the local canoe routes, which delighted Dr. Z to no end.

After long last, they STILL didn't have results, so they just did top female and top male for each event and said they'd mail out medals to everyone else who placed. I was very disappointed, as this is the second time I've placed overall and the second time I wasn't recognized officially. (The first time being the Dippykill Froggy Five, where I placed third but they didn't do awards.)

I'll be sure to post full stats once they're printed in the paper with field size. For the moment though, I was second overall and first in my age group. Yay!

For today, I did a two-mile recovery run, which went fairly well. I wasn't as sore as I feared. I also have Karate tonight.

Tomorrow is my long run. Maybe paddling as well, but looking at the weather I'm not holding out much hope.