Amazing race for me!

Just before I figured out an amazing feature on my watch called the Run/Walk Alert. I could set it to alert me every 1:00 or 0:30 to run/walk. I love this feature. In the past I only knew how to set up intervals so when I got my results it wasn’t by mile but buy that interval which made it very difficult to see my per mile pace. It was very frustrating so I started just doing the run/walk intervals by feel and by constantly looking at my watch. I was never consistent. Well this feature makes me more consistent. I’m so happy!

This course is very favorable for me, it was almost entirely downhill or flat, very few uphills. This first mile was mostly downhill and my time came in at 12:41. That was a great mile for me. I was a bit concerned I started to fast and I was going to crash and burn before the finish. But I kept going with the same 1:00/:30 split. Mile 2 had a long downhill which help to keep mile 2 under 13 minutes at 12:52. I got a bit worried as I was running faster than I was for Torchlight 5K which was just 3 days before. And during that race I died during mile 3. Well the downhill continued on mile 3 and I finished with a 12:48 mile. I wasn’t sure what was going on with me. Why was I doing so well?  My 5K time was very similar to my time at Torchlight. But I wasn’t ready to die like I was after Torchlight.

Mile 4 was had a 72-foot downhill and again I was under 13 minutes at 12:49. At this point I was completely amazed at what I was doing. I wasn’t sure if my watch was working right but I kept hitting the mile markers at the same time as my watch so it must be right. I know the downhill course helped but this is 4 miles in a row that was under 13. I thought for sure this was my last fast mile. But I was wrong!  Mile 5 was my fastest mile, I was helped by a 118-foot downhill!  It was 12:37. Once I saw that, I changed my focus. I was going to make sure all miles were under 13 minutes. I struggled a bit during mile 6 but I was insistent that I was going to do this and boom, I had a 12:42 mile. I was so overjoyed by this but I really gave it my all during that mile so the last quarter of a mile to the finish was a struggle. I walked quite a bit which is silly because this is usually when I push the pace. I saw the corner that I had to turn to get to the finish and ran as hard as I could. I got the finish line and my time was 1:19:30. Obviously not my best 10K time but I had such an amazing race considering my running pace lately. I’m still in shock.

 

Flat, warm and humid

Race number 20 for the year is complete, the Rock ‘N Roll Chicago Half Marathon. This was a big race. There were 20,000 runners doing the 10k and Half Marathon. The race started at 6:30 but by the time my corral started it was after 7am.  Huge race!

The starting temperature was 72 degrees and the humidity was 78%. I thought it was sticky, I was in the minority as most people said the weather was great! <eye roll>

I really don’t know how well I did in this race as the tall buildings in Chicago’s downtown area screwed up my splits. It was so bad that when I got to mile 6 as marked on the race course my watch said something like 6.6. Once we got out of downtown and ran around shorter buildings me GPS was more accurate.

Thankfully they gave us splits at the 5K, 10K and 15K markers so I have an idea of how well I did. The first 5K was great with an average pace 13:11. I slowed down during the second 5K with an average pace of 13:42. Surprisingly I didn’t lose much during the third 5K as my average pace was 13:49. That is great for me. I’m not sure about individual miles but I do know that the first 9.4 miles my pace was under 14 minutes. Awesome.

Like usual, I fell apart during mile 11. I ran into a girl running her first half but her legs were shot. I ended up walking the last 2 miles with her. It was fun. I knew that I wasn’t going to make it under 3 hours so after that I just want to finish. I know that is a bad attitude to have if I was competitive but I’m not, I want to have fun!

Race number 19 for 2017 was a simple 5K in my normal stomping ground, along the Mississippi river in downtown Minneapolis. Since this race start was so early at 6:30am and we had a Twins game with fireworks the night before, we stayed at a hotel close to the start line. That was a good idea and if we do this race in the future, I’d totally do that again.

This race was not memorable. It was humid and my time wasn’t great at 40:42. My first two miles were barely under 13 minutes and mile 3 was a disaster at 13:29. My overall pace was just under 13 so that was ok. The hot dog at the finish line made me nausea.  Eric ran the half marathon so I had almost 2 hours to kill after my race so I went back to our hotel and went in the pool and hot tub before walking back to the finish line to see Eric. His race was on par with his last half in Seattle.  We went back to the hotel after his race took a nap and packed up and went home. Not that exciting for a 4th of July for us.

We spent the 4th of July weekend babysitting my niece, Danielle's kids. We also toured around New Ulm. It is such a cute town. We went swimming with DJ at Flandrau State Park's sand bottom pool. Other than that we didn't do much else.

We traveled to Rapid City over the weekend for Eric's Mom's 75th Birthday. It was a surprise!  We left work on Friday and picked up DJ and Byron on our way out. Bonnie came up from Omaha too. It was a fun weekend, even if it was so short.