Three in a Row! and maybe a 4th...?

OK I seriously think I take way too long to get these posts up but honestly it's time consuming and my time is already fully consumed!  Plus I think I'm always obsessed and slow at compiling pictures between my phone, Mark's phone and the camera and then putting them into a post.

I have three races to report on.  Two of which I'll cover in this post.

First is the TC 1-Mile.  This was my second year running it down Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis and I had been looking forward to it.  All out for 1 mile, that's it.   It was a pretty cold evening and it started raining a bit while we were waiting for our wave to start.   Here's my being REALLY excited about it starting to rain :-P

Mark's buddy Steve was also running his first TC 1-Mile and you can see him with his hands in his pockets behind me in the above picture.  White shirt, black pants.

And of course Mark got this great shot of us before the start of the race too.  Say Hi again to Steve taking a picture of himself as well off my right shoulder.

I wasn't sure what to expect since I thought I got a pretty fast time last year (6:57). My shins/ankles have been giving me on and off problems too. The first 2-3 blocks were a lot of people dodging to get out in front of the wave so that took a slight bit of energy. Once I got some space I settled into a hard pace that I thought I could hold on to. Amazing how after training for distance running, one simple mile can feel SO long! I crossed the half way clock and thought I was going to die soon. HR was pushing 190 and I wasn't even half way yet. Hit a little bit of headwind for a block or so but nothing horrible.   I got close to the finish line and saw it was getting closer to my time from last year.  

"Crap, I'm going to miss this PR.  I was SURE I'd be faster than last year! "

So I booked it with my last ounce of energy to cross the finish line as fast as I could.  If you need proof, see the really awful picture of myself proving I was working hard....

Bleh!

In short, we did end up finding out the clocks were a few seconds off and I actually DID get a new 1-Mile PR  6:46 with an average HR of 186.  

Our friend Steve had an awesome run as well and is working on perfecting his one handed post-race portraits.   Nice work Steve!

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This Saturday (yesterday) we had the Spring Fun Run here in Eden Prairie.  This was a circular course, mostly flat that we chose as our tune up "B" race for this weekend.  Weather was pretty cool but warm enough that I could sport my new SkirtSports running skirt (love their stuff!)   It was a very small race and mostly run by teenage girls as it's a "Girls on the Run" event.  I figured Mark and I had a chance to win at least our age divisions again but my focus was soley on just being faster than my 23:51 from Jump To It.  With our "A" race coming up in less than a month now, I can actually find myself getting nervous at the starting line of these "B" races.  

We starting on the front of the line but as I figured, we were quickly overrun by teenage girls starting out MUCH too fast.  Took a bit of dodging but not too horrible.   My shins/ankles have still been getting hot and with about a 10 minute warmup pre-race, I was feeling pretty good about a mile in.   I had no idea what pace I was going, just trying to push 90% of what I got.   I was starting to get very winded by the time we were coming up to the only small hill on the course so I pushed up it hard hoping to recover on the downhill.  No such luck, I couldn't get my heartrate back down so I know my pace was suffering somewhere just after the 2 mile mark.   Hit a headwind coming towards the finish line for this one as well and crossed at a clock time of 24:03. 

Damn, 12 seconds slower than my PR. 

I figured between the humidity and my shin/ankle pain, I was slowed down more than I had hoped.   BUT there is rumor that the course was actually measured to be closer to 3.2 miles.   Which would actually have brought my time down to almost exactly what I'm shooting for as my goal at the William Irvin 5k.   How to know?  Did I get a 4th PR?  We may go measure the course ourselves one of these days to find out for sure :) 

And once again we proved picking the small races can have advantages, Mark and I for the first time ever made the "Top 5" lists on Online Results.   How cool is that?!?   He and I both got 2nd in our age groups as well.

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So now I have to move to a new post about the Gear West Duathlon since I figure getting 3 race recaps in one blog post along with a personal update is going to be a bit straining for my readers :-P