Friday, April 11, 2008

Cherry Blossom 10-Miler

This posting is a late, because everything about this race sucked ass. Well, everything after mile 5, anyway. And the course -- the course was new this year and was beautiful. If it had been a 5-mile race, it would have probably been our best race, ever. We had an amazing and comfortable pace going for the first half. Amanda's friend, Victoria, ran with us for the first half and entertained us with wedding planning stories...see, she weighs about three pounds and can run a 10-mile race faster than we can without the benefit of structured training...which means she can run AND talk at a pretty good pace.


As it was, it was very cold and rainy and Amanda's hip injury re-surfaced at about mile five and I stopped being able to breathe around the same time (from being sick the week leading up to the run). We told Victoria to go ahead at this point, since she was still doing great. We had to walk some of the race, but by the final mile, Amanda found some inner champion and did the last mile in 9:21!!! She finished the course in 1:40.24 -- which is a great time, especially considering the challenges we had. I was not able to channel anything but an inner feeb, and ended up finishing in 1:42.09 (thanks to a woman running alongside me who refused to let me walk even though that is all I wanted to do).

In retrospect...running this so soon after the 1/2 marathon was probably not a great idea. I've been pounding the glucosamine ever since. At the same time, I'm itching to run this again next year in a much better time.

No comments: