Arbor Day 10k

This past weekend I took a leap of faith and ran a 10k. After finishing the Shamrock shuffle 8k two weeks ago, my friend suggested that I do the Arbor Day 10k with her. At first I was skeptical. I did better than expected with the 8k but I really needed to build my base instead of pushing to run longer distances. On a whim I said "f**k it" and signed up anyway. I could push myself to run 6.2 miles...and if I had to walk a bit I had to walk a bit. Plus, the course was rolling hills (something I somewhat enjoyed back in CT) and through an Arboretum, which should make for pretty scenery.

After signing up I proceeded to get a nasty cold from Izzy which required lots of Halls or else I went into massive coughing fits. I'm pretty sure I made them a new food group for an entire week. I was able to fit a 2 mile run in two weeks ago (before we left for New Hampshire), but nothing on the weekend because we were visiting with family. Last Wednesday I still felt awful so Buster got a walk, but I didn't end up running.  Thankfully on Friday I felt good enough to run 3 miles with Buster which meant there was no backing out of Sunday's race.

I got up bright and early Sunday morning to pump and then pick up my friend on the way to the race. The forecast called for rain, but we ended up having 55 degree sunny weather, although it was pretty humid.  I lined up around the 11 minute mile runners, but figured I would probably be closer to the 12 minute mile runners because of the longer distance and the hills which I am completely unaccustomed to running. When the course organizers said that there were rolling hills they were not kidding!  We barely had run for two minutes before we faced our first hill and sure enough it was rolling hills the rest of the course.  I walked a few of the hills (or at least parts of them) and walked through the water stations. I did my best to look up and around at the scenery- which was nice with trees and fields surrounding the paved road- but I wish that at least something was flowering when I ran by.

Around mile 4 I started to get tired.  My mind was wandering and my music wasn't helping.  For some reason, I started to think about my track days and the day that I qualified for Division 1 Nationals in the weight throw. I thought about how the weight felt coming off my hands and how as soon as I heard how far I had thrown, I ran over to my head coach and my throws coach and gave them the two biggest hugs imaginable because I was so excited (they were psyched for me as well).  Remembering that moment somehow gave me a burst of energy and a complete high.  I'll have to put that in my back pocket for when I struggling in future races.  :-)  Thankfully it was around this time that we started to go downhill more than uphill so that definitely helped as well!

Despite the fact that my Nike+ sensor told me that I was finished with the 10K before I hit the finish line (grumble, grumble), I was able to finished with a nice sprint.

Official time: 1 hour, 11 minutes and 52 seconds.

Average pace: 11:34/mile

I was almost 40 seconds slower per mile than for the Shamrock Shuffle, but that's to be expected with the hills.  

Not sure what my next race will be....I'm sort of tempted to try to train for the Soldier Field 10 miler because what's 3.8 more miles? However, it's going to be super hard to train correctly for that with CP traveling for work when I would need to do my long runs on the weekend. I'll need to think about it....