Irongirl apparently really wanted me to do this race. I'm sure she brought it up 10 times in the last couple of weeks.
Being someone who knows how to take a hint, I decided to go ahead.
Now I have a ton of excuses for what I deem is a sub-par performance (or should that be over par? I guess it depends if it's a golf metaphor or not). Coming of my biggest mileage month ever in June the first 2 weeks of July I ran a total of 2 times for 20km worth.
The four runs I did in the week leading up to the race were all easy runs, just to get back in to it.
Irongirl insisted that I was merely well tapered. Uh huh.
So my plan, that I devised on the way to the race, was to go conservatively on the first of 3 laps and speeding up just a little on the second, then dropping the hammer on the third.
I didn't really consider the fact that I wasn't really ready to race 16km.
All in all it wasn't too bad. The first few km were around 4:45, but I was already thinking that I wasn't going to be holding on to that the whole race, but I decided to try. Maybe I'd get a second wind later on.
I did pretty well, the first two laps were almost identically paced at just under 26 minutes, the last lap was a fight just hold it together. I slowed a bit and finished with a 1:18:17. Well below my half-marathon pb pace, but that's what I had in me yesterday.
My run today at lunch felt surprisingly good, and the subsequent foam roller session was beautiful agony.
I think I'm really glad I did this race. I think it was just what I needed to kick start my training for the rest of the summer.
Thanks Irongirl for the kick in the pants! Love you.
The best part was my cheering section. IronToddler is turning into the quite the cheer leader.
ETA: Placed 30 out of 50 runners, beat by only 1 chick. 5th in my age group! (there were 6 people in my age group
)
).
