Greater Maitland 5K

The results are in for the race!  (Well, actually, they were in about 2 hours after the end of the race on Saturday...and I'm just slow to post this, but still!)  It was definitely a ridiculously soggy mess of a race!  When my alarm rang at 6:30am on Saturday morning, I slowly sat up and listened to the sound of the rain pounding onto the rooftop.  That's pretty much what I had been dreading since Thursday night when I started seeing news breaks indicating that there may be some 'major rains heading our way'.  I tried convincing myself that if I didn't listen to the weather reports, it wouldn't happen.  I could squeeze in my 5K before the worst of it started...little did I know!  It was pretty well torrential and I kind of thought it was going to be miserable, but it actually wasn't bad! 

Not having run in the chilly rain before, I wasn't really sure what to wear.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah, such a girl, I know!)  I figured I'd just wear a light rain jacket and call it a day.  If it weren't for the fact that I was worried about my iPod getting wet, I probably wouldn't have worn a rain jacket at all.  But, I don't have the money to replace a water logged iPod, so I figured I needed to go ahead and protect the hardware I've got!

Flashing my bib number

Standing at the starting line, I noticed there weren't a whole lot of people like there were at the 9/11 5K.  I thought maybe it was the rain that discouraged people from showing up, but I didn't really care.  I was just happy to think of how open the race course would be!  Rob snapped a couple shots of me waiting to start and then walked up to the side of the start line and I tried to just concentrate on relaxing, having fun and not allowing myself to get too carried away in the adrenaline rush.

As the horn blew, I definitely felt that rush and I tried to just let myself go with it a little bit but not to let myself get caught up in it.  I needed to make sure to not get ahead of myself early in the race so that I would suffer later on.  I think I did a pretty good job of this since I felt good pretty much the entire race. 

Going into the race my goal was to try and run the entire thing.  Well, I'm sorry to say, I wasn't able to do that.  However, I ran all but about 5 minutes of it.  That felt pretty good though, especially since there were a few pretty long and pretty nasty hills involved.  The race was an out and back, which meant that you ran out to a mid-point and then back along the same course.  This wouldn't have been a big deal except for the fact that you encountered the downhill segments in the first half of the race and so you knew exactly what to expect on the return trip!

I forced myself to run as long as I could, which ended up being less than my longest run time in the evenings (probably a total of about 26 minutes), which was a little disappointing.  I let myself walk a couple minutes to catch my breath a bit and then ran a few more minutes up the hills before walking a bit more.  I finished strong though with a pretty decent 6-7 minute run segment and I tried to kick it out at the end to finish a little faster. 

My official race time was: 38:37

Official race time for 9/11 5K: 39:41

This means I bettered my 5K time by about 1:04, which I should be happy about and I sort of am I guess.  I mean, I am.  I just know I can do better and I should do better.  While I was very comfortable running this race (even despite the ever-present rain), I don't think I should be content with just being 'comfortable'.  I think I should really push myself and that's where the mental aspect comes in.  Also, I think I really and truly need to work on lengthening my stride more and I'm not entirely sure how to do this.  I'm not quite sure how this happened but I'm pretty sure my running stride is barely more than a shuffle, which I think sucks.  I need to research how to flush this out because I really don't like running like a granny at the races just to be comfy.  I'd rather go for it and run like an actual athlete!

No, that's not sweat, it's rain! :-)

The race went great though, I have to be happy with the outcome!  I ran an entire minute faster than my first 5K and I almost was able to run the entire way!  Also, my 1 mile split time was about 11:30, which is definitely a personal best for me!  The rain didn't even come close to dampening my spirits and I finished in a great mood!  It was Saturday at about 8:15am, I ran 3 miles and I still had the rest of the day and weekend ahead of me!  

   

After the race, Rob and I went into the gym where all the food and festivities had been moved.  There, I enjoyed what was probably the best tasting smoothie of my life.  I'm sure it was the fact that I 1) just finished a 5K at my best time, 2) was out of the rain and 3) hadn't had any breakfast yet.  Whatever the real reason, that thing was so good, I had two of them!  Yum!  I love me some smoothies (though I rarely have them)! 

Before the race: Test shot that happened to catch my nice straight hair...

Interesting thing about the rain and the coldish weather, it does funny things to my hair.  I started the race with very straight, smooth hair in a ponytail and ended up looking like a got a perm mid-race.  Seriously, it was insane!  I didn't even realize it until I got home and went to shower!  Then I told Rob he had to take a picture of my curly hair, it just had to be documented! 

After: Did I get a perm?  I don't remember stopping at the salon...

So, there you have it: my race summary!  Great race and definitely one I'll do next year!  The hills were kind of rough, but the course was really nice!  Though the race was only about 10 minutes from our house and I used to work in Maitland (for about 2 years!), I didn't even realize all of those houses were back there and they were really nice!  There was this really cool lake to run along and it was just, well, peaceful.  I don't know if it was because of the rain or what, but the race was just really calming.  Race 2 under my belt and I'm definitely looking forward to the big one: Race 3: a.k.a. the 15K!!  At the end of the race as we were driving home, I just kept thinking: I'm ready to step up my training!  I'm ready to add more miles to my routine!  Let's go!