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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Women's 4 Miler Recap!

The Women's 4 Miler is a local race I've ran every year since I've lived here.  It's kind of a big deal.  EVERYONE does it!!  It's kinda like, "hey you doing the 4 miler?"

This year I wanted a PR.  I've PR'd the course every year, but I wanted a real PR, one I could brag about.  This was the first year I wasn't training for a full marathon, so I thought I'd give speed work a try and see if it really works.  Well I'm here to tell you, IT DOES!

I was super nervous and excited the night before.  This is me and Pam exchanging texts the night before:


She is awesome!
This was my race outfit:

The shirt matched my skirt perfectly!


Okay, back to the recap...

Early Saturday morning, the hubby and I rolled out of bed and headed to the race.  The kiddo decided he'd sleep in, so we left him at the house.  I mean who wants a kid there that doesn't want to be there?  Might as well sleep kiddo, see you in a few hours...

Awesome views!

My biggest fan!


This event is 3,200 women, mostly from this area.  You can only imagine what it's like by the time they bring their families to the event.  You have to get there early so you can park and make you way to the pace groups.  Pace groups line up at 0730, and the race begins promptly at 0800.

Pace groups were called, the hubby followed me to the 8:00-9:00 pace group, which is almost the front of the group of 3,200 women.  I found one of his work buddies and we hooked up, chatted, and decided we are going to be running buddies.  YAY!!!  How exciting!

Lining up for pace groups!


Okay, so the race...

The gun goes off, my watch decided that it was on too long, so it shut off.  The first few seconds, (literally 10-15 seconds) I was watching it so I could hook it up.  Thank goodness it's an easy watch to figure out and the GPS is super fast.  (Kudos to Nike for making a kick ass watch)

After my watch was good, I focused on my run.  No headphones, just me and the pavement.  Since my watch was off, I relied on the mile marker peeps to tell me my time.  From memory, this is what they were:

1 mile:  8:00  <---- downhill mostly.  Nice!
2 mile:  8:45  <---- significant hill on this mile.  Tough for sure.
3 mile:  8 something  <---- another hill, a long miserable one.
4 mile:  7 something  <----- downhill for the finish!

So my official time was...wait for it...wait for it...

33:39!!!!!!!
8:25 pace!!!!!!!!

What?!?!

I PR'd by nearly 3 minutes!!!!!  That is a significant improvement!

Needless to say I was pretty stoked!

So when I finished, I walked to the finishers area, where my husband thought he'd see me.  Well I kinda kicked so much ass, he missed me.  Every time I ran by him.  So no race pics of me.  I have a few from before and after, but none during the race.  This is not the first time this has happened.  This is our conversation:

Me:  Did you get any pics of me?!?!
C:  Well, you kinda went faster than I thought, and I think the race started before 0800.
Me:  Did you see me?
C:  Yeah, but you were way faster than I thought you were gonna be, and I wasn't prepared.

That's cool, my race pics are usually crappy anyway, it appears that I'm dying, so before and after pics are fine with me!

This is one I took after while I was waiting on the hubby to get out of the porta potty:

Active women every where!  A single man's heaven!


One thing that stood out in the race was my lack of oxygen.  I felt like I couldn't catch my breath, especially at the end.  If it wasn't for the downhill finish, I'm not sure I would've gotten my breath.  I'm thinking it was because of my effort.  At least I didn't throw up.

So the race was awesome, as usual.  It was fun, although around mile 2 I kept asking myself why I do this race!  But I'm glad I did, and I got an awesome new PR!  Wonder what I'll do next year?!?!


4 comments:

  1. Awesome awesome! Congrats on the PR! I am disappointed no puking pic, per your text... maybe next time?

    No wonder you were out of breath! You were flying!!! You were probably close to VO2 max!!!

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    Replies
    1. Even if I did puke, there wouldn't be a pic, the hubby was behind me!

      And I think I did max my VO2 fo sho!!!

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