Minuteman Classic: 2010 Edition

You can’t more patriotic than this (even though it’s not really a Happy Birthday America kind of song ahah)

Love my man Toby 🙂

Hmmm taking Saturday off of studying might not have been the best idea.  Now I don’t want to study at all anymore! Oh well.  It was really nice to be able to go out on the water (I live on a pond) and lay on the dock with a good book.  Very relaxing.  I should do it more often 😉

As I didn’t end up going to NH on Saturday (boooo for that test making me miss all the rides up!) I did decide to race the local 5 miler in my hometown on the 4th.  I’ll be honest: I really didn’t want to.  I’m the kind of person that if I don’ t have a shot at being the best (or at least doing really well relative to me) then I kind of don’t want to do whatever it is.

But my alarm went off at 0730 and I was driving my sister to volunteer at the race.  So I figured why the hell not. This would only be my second race of the year (I’m not really counting Eastern as an actual race haha) I’d give it my all and if I fell flat on my face, well I can always tell people that I ran Boston 😛

And, as a tangent, normally when I race I wear whatever.  I try to make it color coordinated and at least look somewhat runner-y.  Today? I chose to wear my booty spandex and my blue sports bra with my red-ish racing sunglasses.  (I wanted to wear a red sports bra but don’t have any? Boo.  Blue isn’t exactly fierce but still patriotic) I felt bamf.  My thinking was that if I looked the part maybe I could run the part.  Never underestimate the power clothing has on attitude.

After coming back from the race. Hot mess.

I have a love/hate relationship with local races.  On one hand, they’re cheap, easy to get to and small (today was *maybe* 200 runners).  On the other hand, they’re small so you see people that, well, you might not want to see.  It’s awkward being at the starting line with people that I went to high school with and being like “well I really didn’t like you back then.  But good luck!” And the race usually ends up being a rematch of old high school teammate rivals.  I did see a girl that I occasionally run with who is really nice and fun which was great to catch up with her because otherwise I’d have been surrounded.

I warmed up (although with the temps being in the 80s already who really needs a warmup) with some laps around the track, which reminded me of why I love/hate the track.  There’s something that pulls me to speed / sprint work and makes me feel bamf.  But sprinter workouts hurt. I may be old and out of high school for awhile but I do remember repeat 100 and 200m hurting like hell.

Anyway: 1 mile easy, followed by 1 mile of ins and outs (where you jog the curve and “sprint” the straight).  Not going to lie though: the easy mile made me question why I was out there.  I mean, I just pulled off a 500.5 mile month of June and now I’m going to try and run 5 miles really fast?  The ins and outs went better and my legs finally gave me some reassurance that, at the very least, this would work out to be a good tempo run. (My initial goal was to beat last years time (35:32) which is average pace of 7:06 or so but wasn’t so sure during the warm up if that was attainable)

But then again, I ‘ve surprised myself before (Hello Boston Marathon) so I didn’t really know what I was capable of.  Sometimes my brain and body say two different things.  Confidence issues I guess.  I’m working on it 🙂

What’s really cool about the race is the start.  I live in a very historical area and part of the race tradition is to fire old colonial muskets to start the race.  So the muskets went off and the runners took off as well. And let me tell you: muskets are no joke.  I think I lost my hearing.

Mile 1: 6:29

Okay.  The race starts downhill so I was expecting the first mile to be fast.  Looking back, this is roughly what I ran the first mile in last year so I guess I’m consistent? The pace didn’t actually feel too bad and I definitely thought that as long as I didn’t slow too much I could PR this thing.  I saw my sister (who was volunteering) directing runners where to go and I gave her a wave as I ran by.

Mile 2:(13:45) 7:16

Hill.  Basically the whole thing was a hill.  Funny because I KNEW the hill was there.  Not only have I run this race before but I’ve run this area before.  Oh well.  Not a bad split but annoying.  It was also during this mile that some man was really struggling.  Not struggling as in I thought he was in trouble but breathing really hard and heavy.  I’m the type of runner that is easily influenced by that stuff so I kicked it up to A) get away from him and B) salvage a little bit of the time I lost on that hill.

Mile 3:(20:45) 7:00

Better.  I started picking some people off who were slowing down which boosted my confidence.  I knew it was way early to be thinking about a kick but I knew there weren’t that many females ahead of me.  I wasn’t keeping track or anything but I had the feeling that I was up there.  Again, small race so it’s not like there were that many people in general.  But I saw the girls XC coach (who always wanted me to do XC in high school and tried to recruit me every year haha) and he shouted out that I was looking awesome and to keep it up.  A check mark in the pro column for small local races 🙂

Mile 4:(27:42) 6:57

Jeez is it over yet? Over the course of this mile I played a terrible game with myself: I slowed down then corrected myself and speed back up.  Not intentionally of course but it’s late in the game.  My legs are tired: from the race itself and not training at all (running or resting wise).  But as soon as the guy with the watch said “1 mile to go” I was like “CHRISTMAS MORNING” and I kicked it up.

Mile 5: (34:15) 6:33

I passed So.Many.People. It was awesome and just fueled me to keep picking it up.  I don’t really remember much about this mile just because I think the only thing I was thinking was “keep going.  Almost there.  Pass that ^#$%#$” I finished strong and didn’t feel myself slowing down.  Always a good thing.

I left after doing a 2 mile warm down so I didn’t get to see the winners and prizes being handed out.  As I crossed the finish line I saw the high school track coach (whom I had sought advice for Boston in the spring) and said “That was hard” to which he replied “Well it’s a bit too hot for this tomfoolery. But great job.”  It was about 90* by the finish.

Since it’s a local race, no chip time and I think that’s what the clock said (34:15) and it’s what my watch says too.  Results haven’t been posted and Just checked ’em and official time is 34:14.  2nd in AG (out of 13), 4th female (out of who knows) and 36th overall (out of 222).  The winner of the entire race ran a 26:22 (!) and the first female (and winner of my AG) ran a 30:30.  Maybe not the fastest race out there but surely fun.  Faster than me anyway.

Anyway I know this is getting long (when are my posts not?!) but overall I’m really happy with how I did.  Like always, I think I could have gone faster but the average pace breaks down to 6:51.  Faster than my one (and only) 5k race.  I’ve gotten that racing bug again though because I had a blast.  Sure the actual running kind of sucked.  But running really hard and really fast is always going to suck.  It’s the afterglow that I live for.  The pride in knowing that I want to vomit but I’m not going to (partly ego there but partly because I can’t run with food haha).  That I left it all out there.

Pretty basically a lot of fun.  God I need to race more!

Hmmmm. I thought I took more pictures.  Oops. It’s the least I can do for subjecting you through reading this — and putting up with my shameless self-promoting past RR links 🙂  So I’m going to utilize google some more 😛

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY (and stay safe 8) )

I Just Took The MCAT

Well not the *real* one but rather Full Length Test Numero Uno.  For my course we have to take 5 full lengths before our actual test and the first was today.  On the holiday weekend.  Fun, right? MmmmmHmmmm that’s what I thought.

Even funner? The fact that when I was driving to my friend’s house (where I was taking the test because my house is NOT conductive to quiet and focused-ness and all the libraries, testing centers etc are closed for the holiday weekend) a deer came bounding out into the road.  Damn near hit me.  Luckily I have cat like reflexes.  Too bad that those reflexes caused me to jump the curb and blow my front tire.

Oh well.  As my friend put it when I finally got to her house “better the tire than the damage that deer would have done to your car”.  Amen. But obviously NOT the way I wanted to spend my precious moments trying to calm my test taking anxiety.  Especially since I had been out late the night before picking a friend up at the train station and then grabbing some food to play catch up.  *LeSigh*. Luckily I had a spare and everything turned out okay. My nerves were frayed but okay.

Including the test.  I didn’t do as well as I want to for, say, the real thing but overall I was really happy with my performance.  While taking the test sucked hardcore it was good to get some real feedback to confirm my strengths and weaknesses and where to go from there.

But after taking a 5.5 hour test (and yes I did take the entire time) I’m giving myself the rest of the day off.  Hopefully I can relax a bit and catch up on some summer FUN reading.

Now onto running.

Or lack thereof.

You see, as astonished with how much I ran in June (and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get any satisfaction from it) it was way scary to see the numbers.  So after tallying the numbers on Wednesday night I decided to take some time off of running.

And by “time off” I mean 2 days because I’ll likely jump into a run pretty soon today because I’m so tense from the test, as well as tense from not having my release the past 2 days.

But, while I guess this is a chance for me to recoup, I feel really agitated.  I suppose this is like a withdrawal period? Who knows.  I do know that it’s not as though I’m sitting around twiddling my thumbs.  There is studying to be done. I don’t really think I’m getting more done as I’m distracted so everything is taking way longer.

I’m also thinking of doing a race tomorrow for the 4th. It’s a 5 miler so it’ll be interesting to see if my legs have those fast-twitch capabilities anymore.  Last year I did this same race without any speed training post-marathon so anything can happen I guess.

I haven’t committed yet because there’s a chance I might being going up to my friend’s lake house for the night (and coming back Sunday night for a Monday morning appt.) but I still haven’t nailed out the details.  So if I do go I obviously wouldn’t be able to do the race.  Since I currently do not have a way to get there it’s looking like the race will happen and I’ll just go to cookouts and then into Boston for fireworks with some friends.

Soooooooooo that’s all I got.  My brain is FRIED so apologies on a scatterbrained post. Happy 4th of July weekend all 😀

Giveaway from ErikaH

And I’ll leave you with the song that was in my head for the entire 5.5 hours of my MCAT practice test.