The training - Not much. I had a few consistent weeks since Bloomsday, including a 12 mile run last weekend, but I took this past week off due to personal issues. Running felt good, so hopefully that'll motivate me to keep on with it despite the personal issues.
The race - I signed up to do this race with my friend Tim. He's been running for a while and is on a 10K training plan, and this was his first race. I was kind of skeptical about it at first, as a) I'm not exactly in the best shape right now, and b) my average easy pace is about 11:30 per mile, and his is around 9:30 per mile - but he said he wanted to run it with me, so I agreed.
It was a gorgeous day for running - sunny and 60 at the finish. There were 10,000 people there, some doing the 8K and some doing the walk or the mile fun run. The start was delayed a little bit because of technical difficulties, but finally we were off and running. It was crowded, but thankfully not Bloomsday crowded!
The first mile went by pretty quickly, and we ran it in 9:35. I felt like we were pushing it, but not too much. The second mile we picked up the pace and I was really starting to feel it in my legs - they were pretty tight from not running recently. I told Tim that we'd run his pace until we beat the bridge (at mile 2) and then run mine the rest of the way. We ran the second mile in 9:15, and beat the bridge with time to spare (we had 25 minutes to make it 2 miles).
After running across the bridge, we slowed into a pace that was still pushing it for me but that I thought would be easier to maintain. It was getting hot by this point, and my stomach was getting a little sick, so I pushed as much as I could without risking getting sick. The last few miles were pretty uneventful - we just stopped at all the water stations and kept on going. On this course, these miles are pretty much torture - you run by Husky stadium on Montlake, and then there is an out and back, and then it's through all the parking lots back to the finish. It was fun on the out and back part seeing all the people that were behind us, and I looked at my watch and noticed that if we didn't slack, we could make a sub 10:00 minute/mile finish. As we ran into the stadium, my competitiveness kicked in and we sprinted across the finish line.
Final time - 48:27, average pace 9:45/mile
Final thoughts - I'm glad I did this. Tim had a great time and said he definitely wants to do more races. I am pretty pleased with my performance given my lack of consistent running lately, and hopefully that will motivate me to keep back on track with the running in spite of the personal issues I've been dealing with. I know running makes things better, it's just hard to get out there sometimes!
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