Want a Good Laugh At My Expense?

My husband already had fun chuckling at me....it's only fair that I should give other people an opportunity to make fun of me. It's nothing big or earth-shattering. It's just that despite all my anal retentive, meticulous planning and arranging of my training schedule that I pride myself on juggling so that I can stick to it and almost never miss a workout-yeah, about that. Somehow, I'm a week off.

I guess that's not the funny part-the funny part is that I don't have a clue when, where, or how I messed it up. I swear I counted out the weeks perfectly from my spring marathon, just as I did before MCM with no problems. I don't believe that I started the schedule a week too soon, and that most likely I accidentally skipped ahead a week somewhere. I just don't have a clue when that took place. But I seem to remember doing each week on the schedule....so maybe I did start a week too soon? Yeah. Mom Brain.

So, anyway...at least I'm already through the peak week in the second mesocycle. And I thought I was all the way through to the 5 weeks to goal race on my schedule, but alas, I am not. Discovering the error of my ways could not have come at a better time, though. I'm not sure how this happened, but I wound up registering for both a local 10K road race in town last Saturday, and a trail 10K that will take place this Saturday about an hour away. I was only going to do the trail 10K, but I just sucked it up and signed up for the road race. I needed a Pfitz tune-up race so I figured, what the hey. Just do both, what doesn't kill you will make you stronger.

I don't really want to do any major speed work in between two 10K's so I'm going to use this current week between the races as the extra week to put me back on the correct schedule. The week, for training purposes, already started off screwy because I had my CPR refresher course last night (another story altogether...I always want to laugh at inappropriate moments at the bad reinactments of emergency situations in the video modules). I missed my normal Monday evening run so I'm just going to wing it with something Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday that resembles a mini-taper/same mileage but less intense week before my second race in seven days.

Oh, and about that first race. I suppose I'll get to a little race report and photos here.

As I mentioned, this was one of several races I planned to use as a tune-up 10K race per the schedule in Advanced Marathoning. We don't have many locally and it timed out well with my schedule so it was a no brainer to be there, even though I wasn't really gung-ho about getting registered. My oldest daughter was running the 5K as well, just as a relaxed, watch-free run to kind of remember how to pace herself (it's been a good four months since her last race).

Alexis and I caught a ride with fellow runner Suzanne and met up with our friend and fellow runner Jen. We found friendly neighborhood runner Carl and his walking/running wife Jo Ann soon after. My big plan, beyond the tune-up race status, was that if I felt good, I might to try to kick it enough to get into the next qualifying wave up for the Bolder Boulder (I had a BB wave qualifying time with my Winter Sun PR in December, and needed to improve by 14 seconds to get into the BA wave).

My husband and the three younger kids showed up shortly before the races, and took a few shots of the start:






The 5K followed the same course as the 10K for the first half of the race. Alexis was immediately next to me and trucking along for the first quarter mile, and I reminded her that she probably wanted to dial back just a bit so she didn't fall prey to the kid "sprint-stop" technique. ;) She kind of giggled "oh yeah" when I told her the pace and slowed herself down a bit. The course was nearly pancake flat but there was a pretty good headwind.

Mile 1: 7:47

This felt okay, so I decided to kind of let 'er rip, and make some moves to pass runners, which I did in the second mile. I encountered two women in the second mile whom I did not see until very late in my last 10K. This makes me wonder if I'm overshooting my pace too early, or what. I passed them, and I guess it was good because now I was in "running scared" mentality when I was committed, and didn't want to get passed back later on.

Mile 2: 7:44

Mile 3: 7:21

That wind kept blowing in my face here and there but with it being a flat course, it wasn't too terrible. I was not looking at my Garmin much, but rather watching landmarks and working on making it to them as quickly as possible. This is definite progress from when I first started running and constantly checked my pace.

Mile 4: 7:31

I passed a random guy here or there but hadn't seen any other women since the secodn mile. I knew this didn't mean anything because there were a couple of super speedy women who could be several minutes ahead...just didn't know if they were entered in the 5 or 10K so just focused on holding pace and finishing strong.

There was a BIG hill....downhill...in the fifth mile. As in....I saw the guy about 50 feet ahead just sink and disappear when he started heading down the hill. I barrelled down that as fast as I could and tried to keep turning my legs over at as close to that pace as possible after hitting the bottom.

Mile 5: 7:06

I was hanging on decently until about the 5.5 mile point. Just thinking of Cody anytime I got slightly tired, though, was more than enough to stop any slump, and get back on pace.

Mile 6: 7:33

Upon turning the last corner for home, I just let it all hang out.

Last .2: 1:06 (6:55 pace-Garmin measured this as .16 miles).

Total time on Garmin-46:08.

Here was my big finish:


Official race time-46:06, new 10K PR.

I wasn't expecting a PR going in-I just wanted to work on solid splits but wasn't doing any running calculations to see if I was close, so that was a pleasant surprise. The time was good enough for second overall female (first was a great Masters runner-almost 50 years old according to the published results-over four minutes ahead), and enough to move into that BA wave at the Bolder Boulder. So I can look ahead to getting schooled by the big dogs and dogettes in May...just two waves away from the A-wavers! I'm excited and terrified of the prospect.

Alexis finished second, or third, in her age group, depending on whether you consult the "official" race results, or what actually happened. They incorrectly listed the girl two seconds behind her as finishing ahead. It's okay, though...there were goofy age groups for the kids at this race, and they don't do age group awards for anyone but the age group winner, which she knew-so she was pretty darn happy with how she did. While it was not her most smoking fast time ever, her form has improved a lot since fall (we'd been working on that a little), and this was also a 14 and under AG so she did that in an age group with girls up to five years older. :) It was actually quite the confidence builder for her to go out for a relaxed run, and feel comfortable out there.

Here's her 5K finish:







One more of mom and kid (sick of the photos yet? ;) :P )



I actually have some other great photos of the younger kids having fun while we were out there running. This blog post is already epic length, though..so I am going to save it for a new entry in a day or two.

So that's it. Not sure how fresh I'll be for the trail 10K next weekend but that one is such a fun, laid back event-I'll just show up and see how it goes.