I really had high hopes of breaking 6:00 in this race. I have had some fast training, I've had fast races, I've dropped some weight, I really thought this was the year. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. In fact, this might have been the slowest one mile race I've ever run.
My mom joined me at the race this year with Anderson as Dave and my dad were drywalling a few walls at home. I too had a busy day of ripping down a wall, putting together some doors, working on a book with my mom, taking care of the baby, not taking a nap. This was probably not the best ideas to go into a race. There's more to life than racing though, and things have to get done. Regardless, I felt like I could be fast.
We got to the race site, I checked in, and started my warm up. Everything felt awful. It was humid and my legs just seemed off. I did about three miles of warm up but didn't feel very confident when I reached the start line. This year I was entered in the elite wave which was suppose to be 6:00 and under. In previous years, this faster wave was large with TONS of high schoolers and others. This year it seemed very small - maybe because they called it the elite wave. There were only about 14 girls in the whole wave and most of them were one high school cross country team.
I lined up toward the back as I knew I'd be darn close to 6:00 and took off like a bat out of hell. I hit the quarter mile mark right on 1:30 (6:00 pace). I was struggling to get comfortable (should a mile race be comfortable?) and I couldn't get control of my breathing. At the half mile mark I was just over 3:00, still close enough to a 6:00 pace. At this point my lungs were burning and my arms and shoulders were tight. The next quarter mile felt like forever but surprisingly I was around a 4:33 - still hanging in. The last quarter mile I felt like I was increasing the turnover, picking up my knees but the finish line just seemed far away. The time on my watch read 6:21 when I crossed the finish line.
Added: Official time was 6:21 and I won the 35-39 age group.
Molly had it today! She ran a 5:37!
No excuses, I just didn't have it today. I still believe there is a sub-6:00 in me but I think it will take a lot of work to get there. My focus right now is toward distance and endurance. I'll be throwing in another fun, short race next weekend and then it's full-on towards the fall marathon goal.
1 comment:
Sorry it wasn't your day, sounds like you're at least 75% of the way there, and that alone is impressive!
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