Race Reports for 3/17-18 and Encouragement/Kudos!

[escape]

Just filling in for Anne while she is away for the next couple of weeks. Take care, Anne, we'll miss you.

Our WISH Warriors and their events for this weekend:

Saturday, March 17 - What a great day to wear the WISH colors!
keenercam (Cam) Follow the Child 5K
cdn_gal_eeyore (Leana) St. Patrick's Day 10K in Calgary
DJBounce (Darcey), Sir Bouncealot (Andrew) St. Patrick's Day 5K
MouseDogMom (Jackie) Run for the Oaks 5K in Raleigh
disneybelle (Darcey) Adrenaline 5K

Sunday, March 18
hockeygirl (Laurie) Hillsdale, NJ 5K

GO, TEAM GO! ​

Woohoo!

 

[Big Vic]

Good luck everyone!

 

[nucpharm29]

GOOD LUCK WISH TEAMMATES!!!!

Hope everyone has a great race! Hurry back and share all the details with us!

 

[SilverE]

Good Luck Everyone!

Steve

 

[MouseDogMom]

It's no secret that I don't like to run in cold weather. I live in NC, but when it comes to winter, I should be in south FL! The forecast for race start was 37 with a wind chill in the upper 20's. Got to the race about an hour early - sun was out, no wind, felt great. As we lined up for the start, the sun disappeared and the wind started blowing. It was COLD! My personal goal for the day is to finish under 36:00 - previous PR is 37:16 - I've been running 12:30 miles outside lately, so I'm hoping that race conditions will bring out a 36:00 5K.

I actually warmed up for this race. This is the first 5K I've done since I've had enough mileage on my legs to feel comfortable with more than 3 miles. Before I thought warming up was crazy - no way I could guarantee I could run 3 miles, let alone more than that. This time I probably ran 1/2-1 mile before the start, and got all the shin pain out of my system before the race began.

At the end of the first mile I looked at my Garmin and it said 11:06 and I thought no way can this be right, and if it is, no way can I keep this up. I was doing 3R/1W intervals - felt like I could run longer, but the cold weather really affects my lungs and I thought it was better to be safe. At 14:30 the race leaders passed us on their way to the finish line - have never run a course where we retraced our route - that was a strange sensation! Coming up on the second mile marker looked at the Garmin - 22:21. Whoa! At this point we're running uphill, so I'm definitely slowing down, but I know that a good portion of the third mile is downhill so I can make up for what I have to walk now. Turn the corner, back downhill around 2.75 miles. We can see the 3 mile marker, and now there are people cheering. Based on my intervals it's definitely time to walk, but what the heck, I can actually finish this race RUNNING! Keep on running for the last quarter mile, cross the finish line at 35:14!

A much smaller victory - every LR that I've done so far I've overdressed. I'm so cold-natured that I cannot get the hang of dressing for 10 degrees warmer than it is, and I end up dying before I'm done, no matter how I layer. Today I got it right! I thought I'd freeze to death before the race started (DH and DD were both working, so I did this one solo and had no one to hand a jacket to at the start), but the only thing I had to do was take off my gloves and carry them.

Great day overall. Thanks guys! Hope everyone else had as much fun as I did!

Jackie

 

[escape]

Jackie - WOO HOO! You were smokin'!

Doesn't it feel great to beat your PR! Awesome time!

 

[nucpharm29]

Jackie--Congrats on a great race!!!!

 

[Big Vic]

Congrats, Jackie!

 

[Optimator]

Hey, Way to go Jackie. That's so exciting. Way to fly!!

I have a race report of my own.

I've been looking forward to doing this 5K. It started/finished at a school about half a mile from our house. I went and picked up the packet of goodies yesterday morning. Not quite the expo at Disney, but the kids enjoyed the Spiderman fruit snacks that came in the bag.

The weather was yucky last night and coated everything with a little snow but the roads were clear and it was sunny (but cold) this morning. I'm heading out at 8:30 for the 9:00 start and notice there's an e-mail from Action Sports. Start delayed until 10:00 due to ice. Fine. We arrange for grandparents to watch the kids since DW has to leave to take a test before I will be back with new start time.

I jog over at 9:40. Get to the school and see a bunch of people finishing the also delayed 1 mile fun run. Upon further inspection and a couple of questions I find out that these are actually the tail-enders of the 5K!!!

They didn't delay the start after all! Action Sports shouldn't have sent the e-mail. They're very sorry, blah, blah.

Well, it's a fundraiser for the PTO so I can't get all crazy about a refund or anything but I was still a little disappointed. I jogged back home, took a shower, and resumed the life of a non-racer.

 

[Big Vic]

Hey, Way to go Jackie. That's so exciting. Way to fly!!

I have a race report of my own.

I've been looking forward to doing this 5K. It started/finished at a school about half a mile from our house. I went and picked up the packet of goodies yesterday morning. Not quite the expo at Disney, but the kids enjoyed the Spiderman fruit snacks that came in the bag.

The weather was yucky last night and coated everything with a little snow but the roads were clear and it was sunny (but cold) this morning. I'm heading out at 8:30 for the 9:00 start and notice there's an e-mail from Action Sports. Start delayed until 10:00 due to ice. Fine. We arrange for grandparents to watch the kids since DW has to leave to take a test before I will be back with new start time.

I jog over at 9:40. Get to the school and see a bunch of people finishing the also delayed 1 mile fun run. Upon further inspection and a couple of questions I find out that these are actually the tail-enders of the 5K!!!

They didn't delay the start after all! Action Sports shouldn't have sent the e-mail. They're very sorry, blah, blah.

Well, it's a fundraiser for the PTO so I can't get all crazy about a refund or anything but I was still a little disappointed. I jogged back home, took a shower, and resumed the life of a non-racer.

Well, that stinks!

Sorry you didn't get to race today. Mike.

 

[escape]

Awwww, Mike! What a disappointment! Bummer. As Vic say, that stinks! I wonder how many other people showed up "late"?

 

[Kristi1357]

Jackie - how awesome is that? Congratulations!

Mike - that totally stinks!

 

[nucpharm29]

Mike--What a Bummer!!! Are you going to send some kind of email to Action Sports about the email--maybe they can compensate you for their mistake

 

[chimera]

Congrats to our runners this weekend!

Mike...sorry about your race

 

[MouseDogMom]

Mike - What a bummer! So sorry you didn't get a chance to race - was looking forward to reading about it!

Jackie

 

[cdn_gal_eeyore]

Well, yesterday was the perfect day for a race. Good thing it wasn't today because I woke up to gray skies and snow..!! Yesterday it was 50 deg F and sunny though.

The race started just outside McMahon Stadium, the football stadium that the Calgary Stampeders play in (in the Canadian Football League). The 10K was a double loop that wound around the University of Calgary. My plan was to start slow and easy so I could really kick it in for the last half of the race. Boy was I surprised when I looked down at my Garmin and say it reading a 10:50 min/mi pace! I was feeling good though, so I went with it. In fact, I was feeling so good that I didn't look down at my watch often enough and I missed a few walk breaks! I wound up with more of a R9/W1 pace. The only disconcerting part was, with this being a double loop for the 10K, about 27 min in and at the 4K marker when we got "lapped" by a few of the fastest runners!

Anyhow, I managed to keep a really consistent pace the whole way through, and according to my Garmin I ran 6.22 mi in 1:07:05 for a 10:47 min/mi average pace.

Now for a bit of comparison the last 10K I ran was on April 23, 2006 - the Vancouver Sun Run. I ran that in 1:18:12 for a 12:36 min/mi pace. For the last few weeks I've been running just under a 12 min/mi pace, so to break an 11 min/mi pace felt just awesome!! The race wasn't a PR though (unfortunately I don't have a record of what my PR actually is, I just seem to remember it being around a 1:02 race, but it wasn't chip timed so I can't look the old result up).

Anyhow, here are some pics of me with my green racing gear on, including the inaugural use of my 2008 WDW marathon chip, plus our race shirt that we got.

Thanks for all of your encouragement and kudos guys!

 

[Kristi1357]

Way to go, Leana!

 

[hockeygirl]

So, I got home yesterday from being at a conference in Baltimore all week, and go online to check on my race for today, and much to my dismay, I find out that they cancelled it. I was so disappointed. I had been looking forward to the race for weeks, and I really, really, really wanted to run. So, I decide to go online and search for other 5K races in my area for today, and low and behold, I find one that is about 30 minutes away!!! It was called the Leprechaun Leap 5K. I was so psyched!!!

So, I got up this morning, ate breakfast, relaxed for awhile and my DBF and I headed to the race (a 1pm start) around 11am. We got there checked in and relaxed in the car for a bit. It was extremely cold and very windy, so we had to stay in the car to keep warm. It was probably only about 30 degrees out with a windchill of about 15. Needless to say, I was not excited about the temperature or the wind.

Around 12:30, I got out and warmed up a bit by jogging a portion of the course to get my legs warmed up. I jogged about a 1/2-3/4 of a mile and then stretched a little bit before heading to the starting line. Around 1:05, they sounded the gun and we were off. I started out great, it was interesting weaving through traffic the first 1/2 mile or so. But, once I settled in I felt great. Because of the snow we had the other day, the original planned course had to be changed and we ended up doing two loops of a portion of the original course. The first lap was great, although I did feel like I was going so slow, maybe that is because of the wind, it was awful how windy it was. The second loop felt like torture, I felt like the race lasted FOREVER!!! I ended up finishing in 28:20.

I was very happy with my time, all things considering. First, that was my first 5K ever!!! Second, the wind was crazy. Anyhow, I have no idea what my splits were for each mile, because my Nike+ system on my ipod decided not to work just before the race was going to start, so I couldn't use it. But, I timed myself on my watch and saw the clock at the finish line. I am just so happy to have the first race out of the way, and strangely enough, I can't wait until the next race!!

 

[nucpharm29]

Lauri and Lena---WTG!!! Congrats on your races!!!

 

[cdn_gal_eeyore]

One thing that I forgot to mention was how well the race was organized. Since it was St. Patrick's Day, rather than having the usual bagels, bananas and oranges at the end they had hot Irish stew and rolls. One of the local breweries was also a sponsor so you could purchase a beverage after the race. I thought that after running 10K that might not be the best of ideas though!