I'd Love to Stick Around, But I'm Running Behind.

Apparently, I feel compelled to imitate every caution sign I come across...

This weekend was lovely, lovely loverly. Friday night I came home and John and I got to sit outside on the porch with cocktails and watch the birds and squirrels and bunnies that live in our backyard and enjoy the 70 degree temps. Ahhhh.

I made salmon, baked potatoes and steamed asparagus for dinner. Then we watched the move, "St Vincent". It was really good.

We got up at 5 am on Sunday to head to Des Moines for the Leprechaun Chase. It was a 10K where the women go off first and the men start 5 minutes later, so they're able to "catch" us. It was a lot of fun and everyone wore green which gave me another excuse to wear my BEER socks.

Before the race, John and I did a little warm-up run along the river and, as you can see, took super dorky photos.

We met our friends, another couple before the race. The guy in the couple had never raced before in his life. He was nervous, but we told him he had trained enough and his time would be faster than he had ever run in his life. Indeed, it was.

My goal was just to be able to run an average 9 and a half minute mile pace. I hadn't been able to come even close in any of my training runs. I didn't care about place, I just didn't want to injure myself and I wanted to have fun.

We took off and everyone went  so fast, that I never knew if I was sucking, or if Iwas doing okay but everyone else wass amazing. My Map My Run read out my first mile time as an 8.5 minute mile. Sweet! But I wanted to slow that down, because I didn't want to die at the end of the race. I was pretty consistently running 9 - 9.5 minute miles the rest of the race. My heart and lungs felt great throughout the race, but my legs were soooo sore from running that 12.8 mile a run a couple of days before. Help me remember, when I tell myself I'm not going to worry about how I do in my race and I'm just going to run it and have fun, I'm lying. I always care how I do in the race when I'm running it and afterward when I get my time and place.

I finished in 55.53 minutes.  A little under 9 minute miles. I was pretty happy with that. Especially since my lungs and heart were great and the next race I do, I promise to taper. I got 13th in my age group. Since I'm the oldest in my category and next year I'll be the youngest, I checked out the 50-54 year olds. I would have been 5th in that group. Something to look forward to next year. John got 2nd in his category. Nice work!