Today’s race went pretty much exactly as I expected. The next time I run this race I am going to do an actual taper and go into it more refreshed. The next time I run this I won’t be in the middle of marathon training. This year I trained right through it which is a first for me.  Normally, if I enter a race, I race it. I’m cheap, I don’t like to pay for training runs. But, I registered for this race before deciding to run a spring marathon so a training run it was.

My goal was to use this as a tempo run, my second for the week. I had a 29:xx finishing time in mind and a 7:15-7:20 pace was what I was shooting for. One major boo-boo on my part was the fact that I had forgotten how hilly this race is! In fact, one of my running partners, Allison, ran this today, too. Before the race I told her it wasn’t hilly, instead it had a couple of gradual inclines and declines. After the race I found out she was cursing me the entire time. Oops! The fact is, I was cursing myself as well for not looking at an elevation chart prior to this race. Damn! Those hills hurt. From mile 2-2.5 my pace seriously suffered, and again from mile 3-3.25. The rest of the time my effort was very controlled, my breathing- even, and of course, perfect weather makes for excellent running conditions.

Splits:
mile 1 - 7:08
mile 2 - 7:07
mile 3 – 7:41
mile 4 - 7:12

I brought it home hard with a 6:40 paced final half mile (the final quarter mile was 6:13 pace.)

Official time: 29:07 (7:17 pace)
Overall: 61/328 (18.6%)
Gender: 15/179 (8.4%)
Age group: 2/61 (8.7%) – However, I did win 1st in my age group because the woman who go first for the age group and gender was the first overall woman which bumped up my AG award. Cool!