I was going to wait till tomorrow to post this to give it more suspense... but decided against it... I can't do that to poor Eric!
Since the start was only 1 mile away from my house, I decided to get up only 40 minutes before race start... which wasn't such a good idea because I wouldn't have much time to digest breakfast... I got dressed, had a piece of toast and a little coffee, and off I went - jogged 1 mile to the start line, it was drizzling a little... My stomach wasn't liking it too much but it held up alright. I really liked that jog by the way, I'm going to start doing it for every race. It really loosened up my legs so I felt stronger during the race. I found my friends Mai and Guy at the start line, this was their 2nd race and they are becoming great runners, very exciting. Thankfully the rain had stopped by the time the race started. I forgot to start my watch, but I remember the first mile was almost exactly 8 minutes, the second about the same, the third was faster, like 7:30... and then it was down and up the hill, miles 4 and 5. I was ready... I flew up it feeling great, and ran the last mile pretty fast towards the finish line. Clock time was 47:58 and chip time 47:40, much better than my previous time (50:23) - not my 10k PR, but for a hillier course it wasn't too bad. 57th place out of 1,143 women, and 9th out of 274 in my age group, hey, top 10, that's not too shabby for Lucy!
The elite guys are going to be mad though - at one point during the race one of the course marshalls wasn't paying attention, and we got on the way of the elite runners! People coming in were supposed to stay on the left side of the road and the faster guys coming out after the hill were supposed to stay on the right - someone screwed up. I hope it wasn't too bad, I'm sure we'll read about it on the washington running paper - this race has been going on for 30 years, very strange they don't have everything figured out.
Will was supposed to meet me at the finish line but he got lost. He grew up here and he's never been to the library of congress or the Arboretum, and he gets lost in the city. Go figure. I ran home and we went to brunch - banana crepes with nutella and whipped cream, yummm!
Now I'm at work getting things ready for this week's conference, and going to also read the race reports for all the Ogden runners! Happy Sunday! | 