Race Recaps

Well, I'm a little behind on my exercise blogging & I want to tell you about the last 2 weeks & my 100 mile March, but I'm skipping that for now to talk about the 2 recent races I did.  I'm so excited about them both & want to share that with all of you.

I finished up March & was looking forward to getting back to more classes at the gym.  I even had my schedule planned for the first week of April.  Then I got the email reminding me about the 5 by the 5th virtual race that I am signed up for.  I committed to walk either a 5K or 5 miles in the first 5 days of the month for the first 6 months of the year.  OK, no problem, I'll do it over the weekend.  I pulled out the calendar, crap!  April 1-5 are Mon-Fri.  I don't have a lot of time during the week to exercise.  I don't want to give up my classes for a 5K on the treadmill.  What to do?  What to do?

I emailed Laura over at Mommy Run Fast (check her out, love her blog!) & asked if I could split up the miles over a few days.  She said that was fine, so I decided to walk one mile each day for a 5 mile race.  Mon & Tues went fine, then I missed Weds, but was able to do 1.5 on both Thurs & Fri and finished up with 5 miles for the week.

Why tell you all this?  Not very exciting right?  Well I submitted my time for the race & I won one of the monthly prizes...a new pair of Brooks shoes!!  Yay!  I'm so excited that I stuck with my commitment, got my miles in & now I get rewarded with new shoes.  I just got my first pair of Brooks & I love wearing them to work out.

I'm so thankful that I have these mini-challenges for myself each month to keep me going on this journey.  And the moral of this story is always honor your commitments...you may just get new shoes out of it!

The other good thing that happened from those walks is that I did each mile at a very fast pace & all that speed work (plus the 100 miles last month) helped me have an awesome race this Sunday at the Scioto Miles race.  Adrian & I had both signed up for this 2 race series (and got the free Brooks shoes above) a few months ago.  We hoped to both do both races, but we didn't have a sitter in March so I missed that race.  This weekend we did have a sitter so we set out together for a race date!

Before the race

This race started & finished at COSI & was really well done.  We got downtown & parked at Adrian's work garage (yay for free parking!) & walked the few blocks to the start line.  The weather was great, nice temps, not very sunny yet & just a little wind.  We went into COSI to use the restrooms (no porta potties, woot!) & then headed out to line up.  It was a 5K loop that you could do once, twice or 3 times.  I was walking the 5K & Adrian was running the 10K.

The horn blasted & we were off.  I went to put on my music & my MP3 player wouldn't work.  I seriously have the worst luck with music on race day!  So I started walking & looking at the sites.  There were a few other women around me & I was listening to them as well & chatting a little.

The first mile flew by, I couldn't believe it!  I knew I was going at a fast pace & wasn't sure how long I could keep it up, but was gonna keep going.  There were some pretty good hills on this course, but I felt strong going up them.  By mile 2 I was starting to feel the pace a little, then I fell in step with these 4 ladies

Source

They were 4 women from MIT, the group I trained with for the Columbus 1/2 marathon.  They didn't do it last season with me, but I wish they had.  :)  They were flying & I was determined to keep up with them.  We started talking more & that last mile flew by.  Before I knew it we were back to the water below COSI.  One more turn, one more hill & then the finish line!  I thanked the ladies (who I am now Facebook friends with & will be looking for at CapCity next month!) & they kept going for lap 2 (they were in for the 15K) & I headed to the finish line.  When I saw the clock, I got a huge smile on my face, I knew it was a PR for me.  I finished at 46:48 - 2 full minutes faster than Jan!!  I am so excited & proud of myself.  My legs hurt a little as the day went on & today during my workout, but other than that I felt great.

I got my medal, chugged some water & headed back to the finish line to watch for Adrian.  I knew he'd be about 15-20 minutes behind me.  Then I realized I could go down the stairs & watch for him on the water.  I got down there & about 5 minutes later, here he came.  He looked great, high fived me & headed for the finish.  I raced up the stairs to see him cross.  He also PR-ed with just over 1 hour for the 10K.  I am so proud of him as well!

Adrian heading to the finish line!

Such a great, great race day for us!  Hope everyone else that raced this weekend had a great race as well!  Next race is a family race in 2 weeks!

Did you race this past week or weekend?  How did it go??