Saturday, August 19, 2006

R3 Anniversary Run and a new PR!

Greg, Rhys and I rolled out of bed way too early this morning to make R3's Anniversary 5K run. Greg had not planned to run with Rhys but our built in babysitter was out on a scout camp out last night.

We made it out there and a few of my running buddies (Samantha and LaVonne) as well as fellow half marathon trainees (Anita and Jim) were out there. It was a beautiful morning but pretty darn humid. Just doing the warm up slow jog was enough to make us all sweaty. I laughed when Chuck said to do a one mile warm up so he modified it to 8 minutes of jogging instead.

Samantha and I made our way to the back of the pack, there was a bit of chatting and then the gun went off. This was not a chip timed race so I started my watch when I crossed the start line. OF course, this means my official time is a bit off of what I actually ran but that is fine.

Right off, we were sweltering and the course has rolling hills. We saw the turn around point for the one mile fun run and about died because if it was a half mile (it was not) then we were running almost a 16 minute mile....ACK!

Greg had taken off long ago with the stroller and the last time I saw him on the course was as he turned the corner near the 1 mile mark, I was probably just past half a mile.

At the one mile mark, we were stunned to see our time was 10:53....the fastest mile I have ever done since I started this running business in February. I was feeling slow (seems to be a trend lately) so that really helped me out.

The second mile was a bit easier because we were on fairly level ground, still some rolling hills though. We passed the two mile mark in 11:18 and as we turned the corner, we saw IT.

IT was a long, long, long hill in front of us. It wasn't steep, it just went on forever. Samantha (my buddy) and I helped each other up the hill, encouraging one another.

At the top of the hill was our last turn and we were just over a half mile to the finish. There were two high school girls in front of us, walking. As I passed, I heard one audibly whisper to the other "We can't let her beat us!" Since I was the only runner passing and near them, little doubt I was the her in question. Whatever girls, I just smiled and kept running.

They went sprinting off in front of me and then dropped to a walk again. Everytime I would pass them, they would sprint ahead of me again. At the three mile mark, their coach came out and they ran all the way in. I hit the three mile mark at 12:02 and started to sprint to the finish.

I could see the clock was at 34:something and I really wanted to beat 35 minutes even though my goal was to be under 36. I tried but my official time was 35:03 (my watch time was 34:54)

I was thrilled with my time, it was exactly 3 minutes faster than my previous 5K race. I was pleased that I maintained a pretty decent pace the entire race. I won a hat too.

1 mile: 10:53
2 mile: 11:18
3 mile: 12:02

Husband, pushing the baby stroller, finished in 26:33 He was hoping for under 25 minutes but was still happy.

Samantha placed second in her age group!

Here is what a veteran runner wrote about the race today: It was a great time and a well organized race. Tough course, with a challenging hill on mile 3 and high humidity today. Glad to see I was not the only one who thought that hill was tough!

Overall, it was a great race. Tomorrow is our LSD but I know Chuck said we would probably not do the 7 miles we have scheduled.

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