Nice way to start the 4th of July. Lack of time has not allowed me to put in a lot of miles in the past 3+ weeks so my conditioning has suffered but my legs feel a lot fresher. Today, like a lot of my races I got really over pumped at the beginning of the race and although I told myself I to start slowly and not to go out to fast, the excitement of this fun run was too much and of course I went out way to fast and pretty much hit the wall after about 10 minutes of running.
After skipping the first water station, I decided to grab water at every remaining station 'cuz it was getting hot. I have yet to master sipping water while running or really even walking. I always end up gulping the water or spilling it all over myself. I actually had to stop running at the last station and leisurely drink my water. One of these I will master running and drinking at the same time. I think if I have been running more I would have not hit the wall but on the other hand if I have been running more my legs would be tight and I wouldn't feel comfortable running this pace. Oh well, I'm sure I'm going to figure it out someday.
The other thing that was slightly annoying is that my chip time and gun time read exactly the same on the official results but since I started way back in the pack with the walkers I know this is incorrect. I ran with my good friends and they had a 36 second differential between chip and gun time so my actual pace should have read like 10-11 seconds less per mile (or 36 seconds less than my official result). My timing chip probably didn't register as I was going over the starting line. :-( I guess this is a small thing since this still was my PR and it is meant to be a Fun Run to support Monument Crisis Center and Concord Police Association and be a whole lot of fun. Mission accomplished! My splits were: 6:41/7:36/8:42/(9:38 pace for last part)
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention my official result. The good news is that I was 2nd in my age group. The bad news is that I was somehow listed with boys 10 and under! lol. This is my fault for registering day of race! I'm not ashamed of getting beat by a 10 year old, some of these kids seemed to run really fast! :-)