ooh breathe, just breathe: westbrook winter west 5k

Saturday, February 15, 2014

westbrook winter west 5k

well, today was a first for me... i won first female for a 5k race! this race was supposed to happen back in january but got rescheduled due to a storm. we got another storm here yesterday, and im currently watching the snow fall down again outside for tonights storm, but race conditions were dry, not too cold (20 degrees maybe? who am i saying thats "not too cold"... well 20 is better than zero or negative...), and the roads were pretty cleared of snow and slush.

i was sad that the bff training partner couldnt run this race... we had started training in december for this race knowing we could hopefully dominate the hills. sadly when they rescheduled the race they didnt ask her first if the new date would work for her and she had to work. so, being the super awesome bff she is, she gave me her bib! thanks bff!

i pretty much decided to go run this race at 9:45 this morning (the race started at 11am). i walked around my house for awhile contemplating if i wanted to run or not, had some spoonfuls of peanut butter, and drank a lot of coffee (oh yeah, and hen was up at 3:30am. good times). i ultimately decided that i would run, and i left and ran from my house to the start. i picked up my bib and went across the street to the moonlight cleaners laundry mat place to pee. classy.

i knew this was a small race, less than 100 people, so i figured i would see how well i could do. clearly this means you have to start on the "start line". which was pretty much the corner of the road, near a puddle.

who starts a race on a corner?!

the first part of the race is slightly up hill, and then a good long straight road. when training, i kept telling sarah that the straight part of the race was going to be the worst. however, within the first 50 steps of the race, i had passed the one woman in front of me, and was following two men in front of me. from here on out, it was the 3 of us til the end. we turned left onto the straight road and i just ran. got lost in some music, tried to avoid a few puddled so my feet wouldnt be cold, and knew there were two good hills coming up i needed to get up before worrying about anything going on behind me.

passing the golf course we turned right and headed up the first of two back to back hills. again, training on these hills helped a lot, and i just pushed through. i looked at my watch trying to gauge where i was at and realized i had turned my auto lap off for one of my treadmill runs a few days ago. ugh. pace said 7:10 and i felt good, so i kept pushing. turning left at the top of the hill, i couldnt see the two guys in front of me, i turned around and the next woman was far back. again, kept pushing.

getting to the top of the hill and turning right i knew we had a nice long downhill for awhile. i tried to just relax my shoulders and take long strides down the hill. the sides of the road were pretty crappy and they allowed traffic so i had to be aware of the cars coming behind me (there was also no one around me and my bib was on the front, so cars behind me didnt know i was in a race im sure). a small uphill brought us back onto main street and then it was pretty flat to the end. i pushed it a little, still feeling good, but it was hard to gauge what i was doing effort wise since i was out by myself.

as i got closer to the finish, someone yelled out "woo hoo! first female!" i looked behind me and didnt see the other woman, which made me pretty excited. ive never been in this position before!

i hadnt looked at my watch much during the run, and was excited to look and see what new time i might have had (knowing i ran strong and consistent). sadly the course was long, so my time wasnt a PR, but my pace sure was! (and if i ran the extra 0.07 miles at 6:59 pace, that would equal about 29 seconds, which would give me a 3.1 PR of 21:48. so yeah. im pretty pumped!