It trains me to slow the heck down. Slow my pace, slow my mind and just slow my roll in general. When I have to hunker down and plan to run for anything over 2 hours (in my limited experience) it takes a certain amount of letting go.
If you're one of the couple people who know me best or who have been reading my blogposts over the last almost two years, you know I have a problem in this arena.
More on that later...
Thanks to the awesome folks at The Running Depot, I got to run my first ever 10K this last weekend! I'm no stranger to the Mchenry River Run. It was my very first race ever back in 2012.
We were SO lucky with the weather this year! Living in Illinois, the only thing you can depend on the weather to do is be undependable. River Run 2012 was a sticky, sweaty cauldron of nastiness. River Run 2014 was overcast and a little humid but not unbearable. River Run 2015 was overcast, in the upper 60's and a slight breeze blew by every so often. Basically, the best case scenario.
While the 5Kers (including my two boys and my awesome husband!) were to start at 8:15am at East High School and head south on Green, the 10K course met over the river. In a van, with the ghost of Chris Farely. No, sorry, we had to walk across the River Walk over to Riverside Drive to the starting line over by the pancake parlor.
Not to lose focus here, but what is it with starting a race in front of pancake parlor? Is that a new method of torture? It would have been worse for me if it were in front of a cupcake shop or a really amazing bakery. I'm not sure if the smell of buttery carbohydrate cakes dripping with maple deliciousness was supposed to motivate us or really bum us all out.
I digress...baked goods has that effect on me...
My friend, Melissa who I met with the Mother's Run This Town group that I LOVE to run with was also running the 10K and we did this together. Now everyone is different. Some people probably need to be in their own heads, maybe listening to their own self-prescribed perfect playlists in their ear buds in order to properly get into their zone to race. I guess if I had done the 5K, I probably would have liked that scenario too. But for something longer, I knew I'd benefit from conversation and camaradrie from a like-minded runner girl. Enter: Melissa.
Our first mile, we kind of took off. Since I accidentally neglected to start my Garmin until after we had been running a quarter mile, I don't have completely accurate account of what our first mile average pace was, but according to my watch, in our first two miles we averaged 9:06 and 9:09. This fit right in with my goal: I wanted to keep a 9:10-9:20 pace. We were in the middle of 2-3 miles when we saw the front runners start passing us on their way back. That's always exciting. I'm always so happy for them! These kids were working hard! By the time we got to the turn-around right after Mile 3, we needed to stop and get a drink. After a short drink and walk break, we got back into it. I know I was starting to get tired. There were a few hills right away in the second half, but thankfully the rest of the course was pretty even. No matter the distance, that last mile is always pretty hard, but as we got closer to the finish line and we could see it, I felt great and was able to sprint to the end.
So next weekend I have 14 and I'm going to have to switch gears to run around a 10:30 pace. It's just as hard to have to slow down as it is to run fast.
More on that next week.
Thank you so much to The Running Depot for sponsoring me with this race! If you want a nice group of people to run with on Wednesday nights at 6:30pm or Saturday mornings at 7:30, meet at the store in downtown Crystal Lake! There are some other really cool fun runs happening there with giveaways and informative clinics. Be sure to check them out on Facebook or on The Running Depot's website.
Have a great week, friends! Thanks so much for reading!