Race Reports/Encouragment/Kudos - 9 and 10 June

[Big Vic]

Saturday, 9 June

9 – DrMomof3 (Amanda), Dug720 (Beth) NYRR Mini 10K
9 – mousemgr2 (Susan) Hatfield & McCoy Reunion - KY/WV

Sunday, 10 June

10 - regul8ter18 (Courtney), RunRookie (Rick) North Shore Half Marathon, IL
10 – twoWDWfools () Tour De Cure (my first century ride)


GO! WISH Team GO!

 

[jmasgat]

Good luck, everyone!

Today I ran my first trail 10k--Run2Read race to benefit literacy programs at Stony Creek park in Michigan. One of my goals this year was/is to run trail races. So back in January I bought some trail shoes and then promptly got injured before I even had a chance to try them out. So this week, I decided to re-arrange my runs and do a race. I had wanted to do Flirts with Dirt, but it filled up before I could register.

So this morning I put on my new shoes--breaking cardinal rule number 1 "never try new things on race day"--and headed to the parl. But I didn't consider this to be a race, really. It was supposed to be a tempo run. Yeah right, dream on!

Race day temp:low 70's on a day that is supposed to hit 95. Here's what I learned on my run/race:

--Mountain bike courses (which this mostly was) are very hilly and twisty and turny and narrow.
--I am not at all used to running on paths that are very hilly and twisty and turny and narrow.

That was main lesson. It was fun for the first couple miles, and hard for the last 4. I actually stopped and walked into the water stop at mile 5--partly because I saw that immediately following was yet another hill.I didn't keep the pace I was aiming for at all--no surprise.

I finished in 54:38, and I was fairly wiped out. But in an amusing twist, given that it was a small race, and most people did the 5k, I ended up as the women's winner!

Oh, and the shoes worked out just fine. No issues. So I guess if I choose to do more trail races in the future, I should actually do some trail runs, and definitely run more hills. Or just take these races for what they are--a pleasant diversion from pounding pavement.

Maura

 

[johde]

Nice Job Maura
Yesterday evening I ran RadioU 5K in Westerville, OH. It was my 5th time running in it. So, it's become a bit of a tradition. I did miss the second year of the event. To an extent, I had used it as a barometer of progress. In the past I had done:

2007: 59:09
2009: 47:01
2010: 43:39
2011: 38:39
2012: 38:11

This years event like last year was on a warm evening. The temp. at the start of the race was 84 degrees low humidity, but full sun. The race started with a short uphill to the top of dam, then a 1/2 mile trek across the dam. From there we traveled on the roads of a park surrounding the lake created by the dam. The course was an out and back with a series of gradual hills. My original strategy was to run the entire thing. I run/walk most of my races but had run one straight through last November. for the first time. In hind sight, I should have run/walk from the beginning. Right now, the biggest variable in my running is the temp. It doesn't take too much heat for me to need to slow down greatly.

So, I started off running made it across the dam fine and through the park to the turnaround. They had 1 water stop set up near the turnaround. I wasn't planning on grabbing any but my mouth was totally dried out. At about 1.75 miles I hit an uphill section and decided to run/walk it to the finish. I finished doing run 2:00/walk 1:00. In the end, I finished in 38:11. A 28 sec. improvement over last year, but a long way from the 36:29, and 33:59 I had done last fall/winter.

 

[DrMomof3]

Great job Maura and Jeremy!

Today I ran my 1st 10K. Weird since I've run 4 half marathons and 1 full marathon. I was excited to run this race. It was the NYRR Mini 10K which is the oldest women's road race in the country. This year was the 40th anniversary.
The morning was quite humid and pretty warm. I had heard that this was going to be a hilly course. My strategy was to attempt negative splits and I was hoping for a sub-12 min/mile finish. For the 1st 4 miles I used a run 1/walk 1 strategy and then went to a run 2/walk 1 ratio until mile 6 when I ran to the finish.
I finished the 1st 5K in 36:47 and my final time was 1:12:22 (11:40 min/mile). I was happy with my race strategy and how things went. I'd like to get a little faster overall but I think I ran a good race for me.

Amanda

 

[KSH]

Nice work Maura, Jeremy and Amanda! Those sound like great races and you all did very well - two PR's and a first place finish! Very inspiring! Congrats. Hope everyone else racing had good runs also!

Hearing about the heat makes me sort of appreciate the rain I had this morning for my 9 mile training run!

 

[stitchfan18]

Way to go WISHers!

 

[RunRookie]

Congratulations to everyone who raced today! It looks like WISH was well represented in the achievement category today! That is great!

My Half was a tough one today. It was 90 degrees which was a challenge in and of itself. But add to that the realization that I was physically not quite recovered from last weekend's 39.3 effort, and you have a real uphill road to climb. But, with the help of a fellow WISHer MotoMiker, I made it through (albeit very slowly).

Chalk it up in the "done and done" column! It wasn't pretty, but we crossed that Finish Line upright and without any heat-related issues.

Full race report on my blog.

 

[jmasgat]

Jeremy Congrats on keeping your race improvement streak alive. And I know what it's like to make comparisons to other times and not be totally satisfied, but heat is a real killer! Your pace will drop by a bunch--I wish I could find links to any data that estimates how much--you'd feel a lot better. Anyway, great race!

Amanda Great result! That must have been a neat race to be in--some real world class runners (and at least one world class WISHer!)

Rick Congrats on making it through a tough race. Goes to show that at least half of racing is the mental game and you had your A game to be able to tough out those conditions.

Maura

 

[Dug720]

Hi all! Thanks for the encouragement!

Friday I went to get my shirt and my number. The shirt was not as bad as I'd feared having heard "orange" and seen a picture. It was more sherbet. It's cotton, but I tend to wear t-shirts and jeans every day, so the cotton doesn't bother me - I just don't train in it.

It was not my best race by far, but I am proud of myself for finishing and for running as hard as I could (not overly) the last 400 meters. I had a couple of friends who were also running it, and I think they had a good time as well overall.

I had two near asthma attacks. The first was my fault for a) forgetting to puff on the inhaler before starting and b) taking off a bit faster than comfortable for me in an attempt to see if I could keep pace with one of my friends. Walked a good bit after that to get my breathing under control. The second was around the Engineer's Gate when a braintrust in the TnT cheering section was smoking. Don't even get me started. First off, it's not allowed in the parks and anyone associated with TnT should not only know that but help enforce it. And second (or maybe it should be first), you're with an organization fighting forms of cancer...shouldn't you be abstaining from things that cause cancer?? But I managed to keep things under control.

The humidity got to me though, and while I was dumping water on myself at most water stops (I feel like they could have used at least one more at perhaps the 102nd St transverse area...I feel like there was one somewhere between entering the park and starting Harlem Hills last year, but I could be wrong), the one at the top of Harlem Hills I didn't dump water but drank it because there was a sign saying "Misting Station Ahead". Well, that station failed to materialize.

But I finished. I did appreciate the popsicles - even if they did sort of steal the thunder of those at the FRNY Pride Run (We've had them for 30 years!). As hot/humid as it was, they were nice.

Overall I had a good time and will likely keep this one on my calendar. But it did show me I really need to take advantage of the no school this summer to hit the hills in Central and/or Prospect Park for my training. The block-sized park near my apartment is convenient for my very early morning runs, but the flatness of it doesn't help in regards to hills at all.

 

[regul8ter18]

Well I ran the same half as RunRookie(Rick) and It was HOT. I totally consider this race a mental victory. I wasn't even sure I was going to run this one. I hadn't trained properly and on the tuesday before the race I rolled my ankle on a run. As much as it hurt falling I was laughing cause the bike riders that stopped to help me said it was like that fall in Miss Congeniality.

Now to get back on track about the race. I was really thinking about quitting within the first few mile and then I saw two wish shirts. After that I told myself that I didn't drive all this way not to finish and It was also the first half that my dad and I ran together. He finished about a mile or two in front of me.

Courtney