The weather was much better today than last year! Cloudy and hot but not too bad. Woke up early, ran to Eastern Market, picked up my zipcar for the weekend, drove to the office to meet up with my friend Annie - the race was only a few blocks from my office so it was super convenient. Took a few pictures with my super cool Mexico headband....
Annie is a fast girl but not too fast for me, so I thought I'd be able to keep up with her and she could make me run faster... I think it helped. They had two waves for the 10k, one for runners faster than 50 minutes and the other for slower. We felt like studs by getting in front with the fast people, very cool! Annie and I started together but agreed not to run side by side and go our own pace, and if we found each other good if not whatever. We stayed together the first mile, then she started going faster and I couldn't keep up with her. She stayed within sight the entire time though, so I felt good about that. She was my rabbit.
Felt like I was struggling the whole time, but I thought it's because i was going very fast... not quite... After the turnaround I saw my co-worker Mike running a few minutes behind pushing his twin girls whose birthday was today in a stroller, very cool. Made it the first 4 miles and then I told myself I could push super hard and risk fainting, or keep a decent pace and not faint. I chose the latter. Annie was about 50 feet in front of me... She finished in 47:02 and I finished in 47:16. She is training for the Twin Cities marathon in Minnesota, that's where she's from, so maybe we can do some training together since we run similar paces.
Usually I try to hide from the cameras, but this time I wanted to have proof that I ran the whole thing with the headband, yet every time I saw the cameras it was already too late! I think at the very end one of the photographers took some good ones, or so I hope. I looked absolutely ridiculous with it. Thank you Eric :)
So I finished 147 out of 1754 women, and 53rd out of 607 woman in the 30-40 age division. That's within the top 10 percentile, not bad!
Here are some pics.
In this first ones you can see part of my new office and my new orchid which I will probably kill soon...
The second one shows how thrilled I was of having to wear the Mexico headband...
The third one shows fast beautiful girl Annie
So the lesson learned is that I need to taper better for these races so my legs don't get too tired. I guess Eric won the bet, 47 something... everyone else said 46 and change, I think. Sorry to disappoint :( ... but thank you for the support and encouragement!
Sorry about the delay posting this my fans, I took off to go to the beach right after the race, and wanted to get there as soon as possible to enjoy the sun, which I did! I hope you all had a great weekend! I know at least Marion did! | 