Race Report: Sucks to your ass-mar!

In the spirit of Mother's Day... gather around children and I'll tell you a story. It's a story about a runner who took a week off of running, did not take her asthma inhaler the entire week, ate like she was STILL running (and then some) and on the 7th day she raced and went out way... too... fast.

The most important objective for the day was to run my first long run for my fall marathon. I wanted to try steveq's suggestion and run a long run with some speed work in the middle with the idea being the miles run after the speed portion on tired legs would be worth more (I think that's the idea). So I figured why not do a local 10 km race with a long warm-up and long cool-down?

-7.2 km warm-up - CHECK.

-Standing on the start line discussing with one of my competitors at what age her baby started sleeping through the night when the gun unexpectedly went off - CHECK.

-Sprinting like a maniac to get into the pack contrary to all common sense - CHECK.

-Stepping on the aforementioned competitor's heel accidentally not once but TWICE - CHECK, CHECK. She was understanding, I still suck. There is NO excuse for doing that EVER if one has not been pushed from behind (I hadn't).

-Unable to cool my heels down to a reasonable pace after starting too quickly (if one can be said to start too quickly after one has MISSED the start) - CHECK.

-First 3 km ridiculously fast - CHECK.

 3:34, 3:26 (ouch), 3:36 (average 3:32).

At this point I thought to myself, okay I should actually just flat out jog for two minutes to FORCE myself back onto a reasonable pace but at the back of my mind, a teeny, tiny, almost inaudible voice was saying `maybe you can pull this off.... go for it`.

-Next 2 km discouragingly slow - CHECK.

3:51, 3:58.

Apparently I was NOT going to pull off averaging 3:32 per km and running 35:20 or, a PB by more than a minute... go figure! 5 km split - 18:27.

Last 5 km more than a minute slower than first 5 km - CHECK.

19:42 baby!

Ok, I HATE using my asthma as an excuse and whenever I do I cannot shake the pathetic image of poor Piggy looking through broken spectacles as the savages taunt "Sucks to your ass-mar!" but definitely I learned today that I cannot take a week off my inhaler simply because I am  not running, take it the morning of a race and expect everything to be peachy. For sure the biggest issue was going out too fast but inconsistency in taking my meds was also not very helpful.

Time at 10 km split: 38:08.9

Finishing Time: 38:35.7 (the race was actually 10.1 km, why? why?).

-11.4 km cool-down - CHECK.

Strangely that is the part of the day I am the second most proud of.

-Total Mileage for the day - 28.7 km. Not bad, I consider this my first long run for my fall marathon despite the fact that it was not exactly continuous.

So, the part of the day of which I am most proud: The awards ceremony was scheduled for noon. I left for my cool-down at 10.40 am. I thought to myself I could run for 80 whole minutes if I wanted to in a place I had never been before (a rare treat these days). However at 11.10 am I got this niggling feeling in my brain and decided to turn around. I got back to the finish/awards area at 11.40 am just as they had finished thanking the sponsors and were about to launch into the awards. Yes! A new PB! I made it to the awards ceremony, ON TIME, BOTH b.r.e.asts covered and actually got my award. I even sprinted to my teammates car and back on time to get my club jacket so I would be properly attired. Yay me! Turns out that the bags of groceries I was longingly eyeing were for the age groupers but I got a very generous gift certificate for the store where I always buy my running shoes which is perfect timing b/c my current pair of shoes is already up to 603 km (I bet it doesn't surprise anyone that I track the kilometers on my shoes to the nearest decimal place :) ).