This week's stats:
- 72 Miles
- 11.5M with 4 x mile @ 553, 552, 547, 537 and then 4 x 400m @ 76/77 all with 60-90s jog rest
- 10M race in 57:55, 1st place, $250
- 11M MLR
- 2 days in Tucson
It's always a blast to reconnect with the woman that I have run the last two Olympic Trials Marathons with! Meagan and I got together in Tucson and got to do a little workout together with the beautiful backdrop of mountains in the distance. While there was entire fiasco leading up to the part where we actually started the workout - including but not limited to: driving to a park and then learning the school track wasn't open to the public until after our warmup was completed, being told that there was a public park with a track just fifteen minutes away, to driving to the park and discovering no such track existed, and then ultimately doing the workout, with a minor interruption from an old man berating us for our "aggressive behavior." Yeah, it was a whirlwind of a workout! But it was fun, and we did it!
The rest of the time in Tucson was spent talking over glasses of wine and going to be at 830PM. I can't make this stuff up.
On Thursday, I arrived back in the bay and on Friday, turned right back around to head up north to Redding for the NorCal 10 Miler, a Pacific USATF Grand Prix race. Jenna and I packed our bags, hopped in her car and made the 4-hour trek north without any major delays. It was a big trip for Jenna because it was the first time she spent a night away from Ollie, her six-month old bundle of love. She coped just fine and did the typical things any new mom would do, like go to bed at 9PM. :-)
Race day came with clouds looming threatening above, but no rain fell on us during the race. I was surprised by the small size of the race at the start line, but knew that it would be pretty competitive since a bunch of Bay Area clubs had brought up teams to compete.
Jenna and I situated ourselves near the front of the line, as did another girl that I did not know. We set off, and I tucked in behind the girl and hoped I could latch onto her to do most of the work. After about a mile, my main competitor eased off the pace, and we settled into a rhythm running either side by side, or with me situated comfortable behind her shoulder. She kept checking her watch and, by mile 3, her breathing was pretty labored. I knew then that I could probably beat her.
Around mile 4, we hit some uphills, and I unintentionally dropped the girl and a guy we had been running. I didn't want to leave that soon in the race, but it felt natural, so I continued to push. Terry had instructed me to tempo the first 5 miles and race the last 5 miles. So, I knew that I needed to negative split to just prove that I did indeed race the last half.
There weren't many people for me to pick off in the latter half of the race, but there were enough guys for me to have someone to focus on until 9.5M, when I passed a guy and then there was no one to look up to from there. Fortunately, I was so far into the race at that point that it didn't really matter.
Overall, I was really pleased with this race. Just in 2014, I ran 57:14 at Army Ten Miler and today I was just 40 seconds off that time. Considering I'm not very far into my spring training, it's pretty damn good!
I was really proud of Jenna too because it was her first race back post baby and she absolutely crushed it - running 1:01:49.
Doing post-workout strides with Meagan