Saturday, December 7, 2013

Race For The Hungry Holiday 2013 5K Recap

We lived!!  And there was no rain!!  So much to say about this race today.

The Night Before

This was a first.  Usually I have some pre-race jitters the night before, but this race was different.  I guess because there wasn't a lot of pressure (self-imposed, of course) to do well.  The goal was simply to finish & I knew that barring any acts of crazy nature (or rogue vehicles) I'd finish.  So with zero pressure on me, the night before was pretty easy.  I went to bed at a reasonable time, my gear had already been laid out for a few days since I had to buy things that were appropriately sized - my old running clothes were no longer acceptable in public, LOL. 

Getting Started

Luckily I didn't have to wake up insanely early for this race since it's not that far away so my morning routine was easy as well. I had my half a bagel with Nutella and some coffee and was feeling pretty good by the time LMG got here.  I packed a Gatorade Prime like I did for the Milltown Firecracker 5K in July and drank that in the car as we were getting ready after we picked up our race packets.  Speaking of race packets, guess what number I got?  Just guess?  I can't believe this one keeps recurring!!  This is my sister's number, it's the number I had at last year's race, it's the number 35.  Seeing that, I knew she was with me & that I'd probably do better than I had hoped.

As we headed to the starting line, it was absolutely freezing!  According to the Weather Channel, at 9:00am it was supposed to be 43 and sunny.  According to the thermometer in my car, it was only 35.  Yikes!  It was rough while we were waiting but once we got moving, we were totally fine.  I was definitely dressed appropriately for the race and don't feel like I over- or under-dressed.

Setting The Pace

This was LMG's first race and I had never run with her before so I had no idea what to expect.  Would she be leagues ahead of me, would I have to slow down for her, I just didn't know.  I didn't want to hold her back if she was faster and had more endurance than me but I also didn't want to be crazy far behind where I could have run.  But as we started and the crowd dispersed a little bit we fell into a decent pace.  I asked her if this was her normal speed or if she was adjusting for me and she said that this is how she usually runs, so I was ecstatic that we seemed to be at about the same level.  As we continued, it turned out that we had the same stamina as well.  We both walked at the same spots and ran at the same spots.  I don't really think that either of us held the other back at all.  If anything, the fact that we were staying together kept me going because I didn't want to let her down on her first race, but I didn't feel like I was pushing too far or couldn't keep up either, so we did stay together the whole race.

I am extremely happy to report that I ran more than a mile straight, which is double what I have been doing on the treadmill!!  According to the MapMyRun report, we did the first mile in 11:25!  Again, faster than I had been running this week too!  You can see on the graphic that we slowed down a bit when we hit the largest hill we would come across, and ended up walking at about the 1.35 mile mark.  Not too bad - I ran for over 1.25 miles straight, which was more than I was hoping for. 

We did walk up the rest of the hill, and at the 1.67 mile mark we picked up the running again.  So we walked for just over a quarter mile at that point, but it was a well earned break and even walking the hill wasn't the easiest.  So we completed the 2nd mile in 13:18 and that was the longest we walked for the whole race.  The third mile we had two brief points where we walked because one of us was struggling, but it was very briefly and we were able to do that mile in 12:22.

According to MMR, we completed the race in 39:10.  Since this race doesn't use chips to track us, I think that time is more accurate than the official results, which show 39:23 & 39:24, a difference of a mere 13 seconds.  We were 215 & 216 out of 237 and 116 & 117 out of 134 for our age group, with an average pace of 12:40.

While these were by far my slowest race results, about 10 full minutes longer than my best race results, I am probably the most proud of these.  I had 5 days to prep after an almost 5 month hiatus, I surpassed my goal of running a full mile straight, more than doubling what I was doing during this week, and I finished in less than 40 minutes.  The only way it could have been any better was if I had run the entire thing, and I just don't think that was a possibility for this race, this time around.  I achieved ALL of the goals I set for this race, so yeah, I am happy :)

We finished!!!

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