Earlier in the week last week, I was struggling with how I wanted to run this race. You see, I haven't been training for a 10 mile race. I've been training for a marathon. I did what any good user of social media would do, and threw the question out there for cyberspace to answer. WOW. I had more hits on that post than I could have imagined and tons of comments, on the post itself, twitter and facebook. I can't say how thankful I am to have such wonderful friends and followers out there. You all definitely gave me a lot to think about.
In the end, my decision was made for me. I'd planned to run 1-2 miles at the gym before the race, but I found out it wouldn't be open early enough. So, after talking to my sports chiro, I decided to just go all out and run this 10 as hard as I possibly could. He said if something felt off or I just wasn't feeling the speed, back it down and run a couple more miles later in the day.
Sunday morning started like any other race morning. Early. And with almost no sleep the night before
I loaded my crap in the car and headed for downtown Grand Rapids (a whopping 10 miles away - gotta love a close race). I parked in a lot about a 1/2 mile or so from the start and noticed my engine was smoking and there was a nasty smell coming from under the hood. Crap. I seriously thought my car was on fire. The smoke seemed to go away after a few minutes, so I called the husband (waking his sleepy butt up) to tell him my car was possibly on fire and where it was parked, but that I was going to walk into town for the race.
They don't call this the "Bridge Run" for nothing. I'm standing on the Pearl St. bridge. The first shot is facing south - we'll run across the 2nd bridge with the lights on top at the end of the race. The 2nd shot faces north and there are a couple bridges that direction that we will run across. This is in addition to some little wooden bridges in a park on the far north end of town.
My friend Pete was also running this race, plus a few friends from church and my next-door neighbor. I met up with Pete and we hung out for an hour or so waiting for the race to start and chatted a bit with my neighbor, who never fails to entertain. I took the obligatory pre-race picture (like the new lime-green armwarmers?!? they came in handy waiting around in the 50* temperature), hit the port-a-johns a couple times (luckily there were tons of them and the line moved really fast). I lined up with Lightening Pete, bid him a good race, and we were off.
I didn't feel like I was running very fast and tons of people were passing me at the start. This freaked me out a bit since I had a goal in mind of finishing with a PR. (I was looking to come in just south of 1:45, with my PR being 1:47 set at the Soldier Field 10 Mile back in May). I tried to not panic and just get my footing. We hit the 1 mile mark and I glanced at my Garmin. 9:46! Are you freaking kidding me?!? I've never run a 9:46 first mile in my LIFE. I had to ask myself whether I thought I should reign it in or just keep moving. I decided to keep moving since it felt good. I figured I could always slow down later if I needed to. My next 3 miles were in 9:45, 9:55, and 10:01. I had just run 4 miles at a sub 10 m/m pace and I felt great. There was even a pretty good hill just past the 2 mile mark.
Miles 4-5-6 looped through a beautiful park with some cute (read scary) wooden bridges, duck ponds, and along the Grand River. I got to see the lead guys and girls come flying back through (they were at mile 6 and I was barely to mile 4!) Pete even saw me as he looped back and I heard him holler my name across the park. "Hi Pete!" I took a gu at mile 5, making sure to nurse it for most of the mile. I was carrying Nuun, so I only stopped for one water station. Miles 5, 6 and 7 were completed in 10:20, 10:22 and 10:25. I was definitely feeling my legs by mile 7 and even walked for just a few seconds heading back up a small hill. I also peeled off the arm warmers somewhere between mile 6 and 7 and left them around my wrists. I can't wait to see how silly that looks in the official race photos!
Thankfully, the 8th mile included the same big hill in mile 3, but I got to go down in this time and also noticed that there was a bit of a downhill as we headed back south into town. That nice downhill resulted in a 9:54 8th mile! Mile 8 took us back over the very cool 6th St. Bridge (cobblestone!) and I chicked 2 guys on the bridge, clocking mile 8 in 9:54. At this point, my quads are KILLING me, but I have absolutely NO intention of slowing down. I mean, seriously, I only have 2 more miles to run! The Glee version of Brittany Spears "Stronger" came on the iPod right as I hit the 9 mile sign (10:04) and I realized how much stronger I've become in the past few months of training. I had 1 mile to go and I was going to run it all out. The final mile took us past The Gerald R Ford Presidential Museum, including his and First Lady Betty Ford's final resting place, through a beautiful park and through the Grand Valley State University downtown campus. I came out of campus to run across the pedestrian bridge and saw Pete at the other end. Pete ran with me for about the last 1/4 mile and told me to "run it in". I did. I finished that final mile in 9:45 (and the last few feet in 8:17)! I completely SMASHED my expectations for the race and knocked my PR out of the park. How's this for a happy smile :-)
My official time: 1:40:56, a full 6 minutes (and 4 seconds) FASTER than Chicago. Somehow, I managed to maintain a 10:05 average pace for 10 miles. I guess that's what marathon training will do for you! I rode those running endorphins for quite a few hours, at least until we got in the car to head a couple hours south for my nephew's birthday party. I was so tired and my legs were stiff and sore. I snapped a picture and didn't realize until I went to post it that my son had photobombed me :) It made me laugh.
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