New PR....Woo hoo!

Well, first off, let me say that I had a lovely weekend with Kirstin and Beth. We had a great time in our wedding dresses watching movies and hanging out. I did not do as much drinking as I was planning (yes, I was actually planning on perhaps getting a buzz-on...). Alas, my tummy had different thoughts about the matter so after the 2nd (really delicious) Cosmo, I stopped all alcohol consumption and stuck to water.
I'm thinking my race that morning dehydrated me a bit as was and I just wasn't as hydrated as I needed to be to enjoy the benefits of a good alcohol buzz. Oh, well. It was a fantastic time, alcohol or no, and I had a blast with my old (meaning prior, not age-wise) college roommates.

So...on to the race results.

Kirstin and Bruce braved the morning sun to be up at 6:30 on Saturday - voluntarily, mind you - so that they could watch me run. Beth too planned on joining us, but her alarm clock chose a different path for her, in the end.

We got up to the race course at about 8:10 and I did my warm up thing; Bruce and Kirstin hung and looked at the dogs being primped for the dog show taking place across the street and videotaped me warming up....Bruce and I just got our video recorder back from being fixed, ....I'll post it if I can figure out how to do it. The race sign in was at the bottom of this very nice, steep hill. Luckily, the start line was up the hill and about 1/4 mile down the road, so we didn't have to run up the hill - but we did get to run down it...more on that later.

So the race started, and then stopped. False start. First race I've been in that had a false start. It was funny to watch everyone hit the "start" timer on their watches as they began to run...stutter a bit....and then come to a halt and reset their watches....

Second start was the charm. I really wanted to stop running a couple times during it - in all honesty, I don't think my legs were recovered enough from my long run on Thursday- so I was not feeling as great as I had hoped. But, I also had decided that I just wanted to run it and have a good run. The first mile was a real struggle mentally....But...then I heard my first mile time and it was a 9:10 - my fastest yet...so I was like, cool, I can slow down since I'm not looking to do any PR or anything, just finish under 30:00 again. That helped me mentally - despite not feeling great and actually feeling pretty sluggish, I had run my fastest mile. Mentally I was uplifted, but physically my legs were still not playing nice. So, I did slow, but I still managed to keep a good pace up and really didn't rush myself.

I started down the long and steep hill (as an aside....I was told it was a flat course...um...not really. There were some small hills, but hills nonetheless. Flat courses are just that, flat. I would have categorized this as mostly flat with 3 or 4 small hills and one gigantic down hill at the end.) I thought I was going to land on my face it was so fast a descent. It was hard on my back and my shins, and although I tried to use my momentum to not waste energy, I had to "put my brakes on" to avoid rolling to the finish line. Instead of my normal acceleration to the end, I had to slow down to keep from falling. Mentally, it was kind of a weird feeling - going against my normal routine.

But slow I did, and crossed the line - on my feet - in 28:36! I broke 30:00, and 29:00! Almost a full minute off my last race...I am really happy - especially considering how I felt most of the run.

Rest today - my plan is to watch a lot of olympics and get either
1)inspired to keep training harder or 2) fall asleep on the couch :)
I'm fine letting the Olympians do all the work today. Ha ha.

Have a great Sunday, everyone!