Ran the Mass Komen Race for a Cure in Boston today with Gibtown!

 

Luckily for me, Chris is in town for two weeks, for work, so we ran the Race for a Cure 5K this morning in downtown Boston. Except for the sun, it was perfect weather for running, where I’m concerned. There was so much pink everywhere, it was awesome. You know me, I always start somewhere in the middle, and there were still people crossing the start line even after I’d been running for about 4-5 minutes.  There were tons of walkers and they were even cheering for the middle-of-the-packers!  I just found myself smiling, I couldn’t help it, seeing how happy people were. I didn’t even feel that first mile, which was my fastest. (Will I ever learn to not go out too fast?!) Today, the adrenaline got to me, I admit it.

I don’t have pictures, but rest assured I wore a lot of pink.  Socks with pink edging, bright fuschia pink shirt, black shorts with lots of pink on them. My hat was white but I put the “eye glare stickers” on the top of my hat, and the chrono D timing chips were hot pink!  And I had on pink lipstick and pink blush.

I think, overall, the race is well organized. I would have liked to see mile markers but there were water stops close to each of the “mile” points, so I guess you could have relied on just them. But you all know me, of course I was a running nerd, and wore my Garmin. It told me I ended up running 3.16 miles. Ah, well.

I think Chris may have wanted to kill me this morning. He thought the race started at 8:30, so I think he wondered why I was dilly-dallying near my car once we parked. (I’m high maintenance when it comes to running, I had to make sure I had all of my gear set up.) An extra perk – right after we parked, a lady pulled in with an SUV behind me, and I saw it was Donna, a lady I sometimes run with on Saturdays, another MVSer!  But we had to register, so it was a short reunion.  That woman is amazing – she’s running 22 miles tomorrow, so she was walking today with a group of friends, one of whom I think is a cancer survivor.

At first, Chris and I lined up together. I realized we were in the 10-minute mile range, and I knew that, despite my not running so often lately, that would put me in a spot that would have me doing a lot of weaving in the beginning. Chris told me that he was going to take it easy and that he wouldn’t be talking to me anyway if we ran together, so I asked him if he minded if I moved up a bit. He didn’t, so we set up a place to meet each other afterwards and not lose each other.

Anyway, the course was extremely flat, and part of the first mile had you running toward the city of Boston’s skyline (it started at the Seaport World Trade Center, which is right along the water.) You turn around after about .3 miles, and then start heading away from the city.  After I hit maybe the first mile mark or so, I realized we could see the winner, a male, coming back in our direction. Can you imagine? I’d only been running for something like 8-9 minutes at this point, and here this guy was, almost done.  And there was no one around him for quite a while at that point. (As I look at the results, I now see that the second guy must have caught up to him, or at least gotten close.)  I screamed out for this guy, and a whole bunch of people clapped, and you know how usually the leader is in a zone at this point? Well, this guy looked at all of us, gave us a big smile and waved. How cool is that?

I found during mile 2 and 3, that I definitely need to get back to speedwork, and running on a more regular basis, again, and at a better pace than what I’ve been doing. And core work, definitely. I felt stomach cramps whereas before I usually didn’t get them, while running at these paces. I walked for a short bit between 1.4 and 1.5ish, and ate some of my sports beans (I’d been up since about 5:30 at this point and needed something more than the granola bar Chris had nabbed for me.) And I walked for a tiny bit past mile 2, and got myself some water in a bit. So, I’m quite surprised at my “average” pace and splits on my Garmin.

• Mile 1: 8:23
• Mile 2: 9:01
• Mile 3: 9:14
• extra .16: 7:53 pace (didn’t feel like I could sprint at that point but I guess I was doing alright)
• Garmin time: 27:55, official net time for the race: 27:44.
• Garmin average pace: 8:50
• Official average pace: 8:59

There were a total of 2362 people (but it felt like more).  Here are the race results on Cool Running.

• Place overall: 750/2362
• Place in division (Females, 30-39): 97/508 (yep, totally shocked about that!)

It was cool to be in a race again – it’s been about 2 months since my last one, so this was fun. And if you’re wondering how I could run today and not last week, well, I’m on antibiotics now. I went to the doctor this week and found out it was basically my sinuses making me miserable. I love antibiotics.

Now I can’t wait for the Tufts 10K in a few weeks, on Columbus Day!

 

p.s. For those of you with wordpress blogs, what is this that it looks like the default on my blog is to “not” allow comments? WTH?

 

Two Run Tuesday

Normally, I attend track practice on Tuesday nights. However, lately, especially when doing 200s, I’ve been feeling sharp, shooting pains in my right quad  muscle.  I tried changing my gait last week, trying to keep my legs from kicking up too high behind me, and keeping my arms down low, so I could still try to keep up a fast pace. That helped some, but when I looked at the workout scheduled for tonight, I just didn’t think it would be the prudent thing to do.  It involved 20 2oos.  I so love that short distance and the burst of speed that I can usually generate but lately it just causes pain.  That really bums me out.

Tuesday is my flex day off during the summer. I live for Tuesdays now!

I had dinner with Chris, the Gibtown Runner, last night, who is in town for work again.  If you read his blog, you know he’s trying to get a team together for the Ragnar Relay in Arizona in Feb. 2010.  I am seriously considering doing it but I do have fears about it at the same time.  As I said to Chris, when I first wake up in the morning and think about it, part of me says, “just tell Chris  ‘No!’ for sure,  just say ‘No!’”   Then I get out there running, and it helps to think of what it’d be like to meet people in person, feel like part of a team, and how knowing I’m depending on others and they are depending on me can be such a motivation to keep on going. (And yes, the idea of walking when the van is out of sight has crossed my mind, LOL!)  Then, I looked at the training for intermediate runners that is suggested on the race website, and I’m like “Are you friggin kidding me?  Three runs in the same day in January? No way in hell!”

I was inspired by Felice, the Happy Runner, to attempt to do 2 runs in the same day.  (You can click here to read her post.)  Like her, my first run of the day was crap. Ironically, my legs feel better now, at the end of the day, than they did before and after the first run of the day.

My first run this morning was 6.22 miles. Crap, complete crap. Maybe it was the humidity, maybe it was because it was my “hilly” run. Maybe it was because I couldn’t figure out if I should try to do it at my regular pace, or whether I should do it at a purposedly “easy” pace.   Maybe it was that I was getting a bit bored of my playlist. I tend to think it was the humidity and the overused playlist.  Anyway, I walked for very short distances, but frequently. At one point, I realized I was quite hot, and ended up taking off my shirt, which felt a million times better.  Also, I didn’t carry water, but stopped back at my house after 4.4, and took a lot of gulps of my propel water, plus a few Endurolytes.  After that, I definitely felt better, if a bit spacey (not sure about that, honestly) and the loop around my lake (which is awesomely flat) was much better, pace-wise and otherwise.

This evening, I only did 3.5 miles, and that was enough.  However, there really wasn’t much of an urge to walk, and the pace was much more even, about 9.33 for the entire 3.5 miles.  I made sure to listen to another playlist of mine, one which I hadn’t listened to lately, so it was almost like some of  the songs were “new” again.  Anyone else out there ever feel like that with some of your music?

It could have been that I knew the run tonight was supposed to be easy, that was the goal.  It could have been that I just knew it was going to be shorter and could relax.  It could have been because the route was more flat (I’m sure that had something to do with it.) It could have been that it was less humid.  It could have been the food or fruit I ate today in the interim.  Whatever it was, it just felt better this evening.

Now, could I do that for about 9-10 more miles over a 24 hour period?  In Arizona?  In February?  I’m not sure, but I’m getting closer to saying yes.  Now I need to check out air fares. 

Am I going to do this every Tuesday I have off this summer?  Probably not, I’m not insane.  But it is nice to see that my legs are still attached to my body.

My brother really wants to do the race, and it’d be an awesome experience to share with him too., if we can both afford it. We’d be traveling from Boston and NYC, so the flights won’t be cheap.   He’d be a great person to have on our team – he’s already done a relay like this twice in Texas.  He won’t care that not everyone is as fast as him (he’s hoping to qualify for a 3rd time, for Boston, this fall in Philadelphia.  My fingers, legs, and toes are already crossed for him.) He’s already offered to do a more difficult leg for me if need be.  (Hell, Lindsay’s already offering to do 12 mile legs for me!  I’ve told her to be wary of offering that sort of thing to me – I just might take her up on it.)

Do you hear me, Chris, I’m getting closer to saying yes, and sending you that check, so help me!

Two unrelated matters:

(1) Has anyone ever heard this singer before?  Would you expect this voice to come out of someone this young? At times she reminds me of Bonnie Tyler!

Lesley Roy, Slow Goodbye

(2)  You know you are getting too  much rain when your deck’s welcome mat starts to sprout weeds. I am not kidding about this, I will need to take a picture of it tomorrow to prove it. 

Thanks for reading, and have a good run on the roads and trails everyone!