Roxymama's 5k to Marathon, Time to Collect Another Castle





Everyday I'm Shuffling!
Shamrock Shuffle 8k, Chicago, IL 4/2/17 Race Recap



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So originally we were just going to the Expo on Sat. and head back home but instead we met Hubby's parents there since his Dad was running us the next day. (Short expo recap on page 101) And then we stopped at Connie's pizza (I behaved myself and had chicken salad) for lunch and then kiddo wanted to play at the grandparents condo for a bit. And suddenly it was arranged she'd be spending the night and so all of sudden we had a quiet evening sans-kiddling. So hubby went on a 26 mile bike ride through local trails while I ran almost 4 easy miles. Isn't that what you all do for a quiet relaxing evening? I mis-calculated my miles as I was trying to finish my run at Starbucks and ended up there early AND IT WAS CLOSED!!! The horror! I was so looking forward to a small iced something. And then I had a brief walk home looking like Eeyore. But at least we both were able to sit on our butts all night and go to bed fairly early after laying out our gear. I went to bed feeling confident and woke up feeling like I was going to puke from nerves. Why does my body do this to me? I feel like I'm generally in a good head space and then my body race morning just goes into anxiety mode. I did force down a banana and fluid but there was no hope for my peanut bar.
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We drove to the in-law's condo which is so close to the finish line and the start area. It wasn't crowded to get warmed up thank goodness but I didn't get 1.5 miles in...more like .7 ish as we were getting pretty close to corral closing. I think I got into the corral at 8:10 and they closed at 8:20 (although my watch said 8:19!) But my legs felt ready. Oh, I also did a bathroom break first and got inaugural use of a newly opened up porta-potty row! Even got to unwrap the toilet paper roll. I'm still waiting on my commemorative pin for that amazing life event. And on the way out I bumped into my bestie's fiance. He had ran the Turkey Trot last Nov. with us, so I guess the run bug stuck. "one of us, one of us" After talking with my bestie via text she is now running the rock n roll races with me in July. "one of us, one of us"



Ok, so back to the corrals. The weather felt awesome! About 49 degrees with light wind (for Chicago) and no rain and not very sunny. I could deal with that! Hubby & Father-in-law dressed with way more layers than me. We all left our gloves back at the condo. Those two were probably more comfortable waiting for the race than me but both felt overdressed during it. Even I felt a tad warm during moments but generally I think my long sleeve + capris + no hat was appropriate. We'd get cool breezes now and again on course so I didn't regret my clothing decision. Chris' dad had us a spot pretty close to the front of Corral D and on the leftish side. Corral A, B, C were all fairly smallish and D was HUGE. I'm guessing A LOT of people have that 8-sub 10 min mile proof perhaps? Right after they started doing the announcements hubby pointed out a lady in front of me whose jacket was a 2016 Iron-man Finisher and then I noticed beside me was a woman probably 10 years my senior with a sweet blue striped Boston jacket. That's when I had a "Oh F" moment. But I reigned in my terror and just said over in my head "it doesn't matter...let them go...just run your race...who cares if you get passed by everyone...it doesn't matter...you won't die because a bunch of people finish before you...there are thousands of people behind you, etc" Is it weird I still have to calm myself down about such little things?

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Corral D was off about 20+ minutes after the Elite start but I failed to take note of the actual time so my "clock watching" at the mile markers strategy was basically dunzo and I knew my garmin would be drunk (spoiler: it was sooooo drunk) so it was just me and my "feelings" and my stopwatch function together forever throughout the race.
Luckily my music was working; an improvement over last years frozen phone debacle!
First Mile: I felt like I was running a very easy-ish/still racing pace, probably a little slower than tempo pace at first and there is a slight gradual uphill grade to the beginning as we go over the river. So when we made the first turn on flatter land I kind of picked it up a little but I still felt pretty in control/not burning my whole candle. PS I passed Boston lady around here. Bonus: the course was WAY less crowded than my corral from last year but still a sea of humanity....just way easier to find a lane and stay in it.
Mile 1 buzzed on my watch slightly before the real marker. Drunk garmin said 8:51. Oops? But unreliable. As you will see.

Second Mile: Started with turning to go South back over the river and had quite a bit of a straightaway. (Hubby asked me to read him the course map in the car and in doing so I ended up memorizing it and thankful that I did. It helped me make the race feel shorter and helped me get on the correct sides of the road for turns, etc.) I kind of felt like my garmin was wrong so I just kept moving what felt to like a tempo or perhaps faster pace. Garmin hit Mile 2 this time several at least two blocks early. Drunk garmin said 9:00.

Third mile: Has a section where you turn and run back North before turning and running back south. So if I hadn't of memorized the course map I would have forgotten that was in there and I would've been like "hey, no, not north again!" I have to say my legs were feeling locked in and I did started pressing the pace here. Maybe that had to do with Boston lady passing me. I dunno (yes, it 100% had to do with that.) I also sneaky peaked at my watch after it buzzed (too early again!) at mile 3 but I could see what my approaching 5k could be. Drunk Garmin said 8:56 for 3 miles. I really don't think so. I was at 28:34 when I passed the official 5k mat (My SECOND FASTEST 5k! HUZZAH...and it felt 100% better than my fastest and third fastest 5ks in which I was near puke levels at the end....I find this to be just as big a success in my brain as the finish time. Because now at least I know that in a regular 5k I can probably push that third mile super hard and maybe just maybe eek a new PR this year....hmmmmm)

Fourth mile: Bon Jovi's living on a prayer came on right after the 3.1 mat. Halfway There was blaring and it was nice to know I was "over" halfway there. Somewhere in here my left side started to get the teeniest of baby cramps and I started to get a case of the dry mouth. I often will have good yoga breathing during training runs and then I forget to focus on that during races and I think I was being the dreaded "mouth breather." I told myself to just keep focused because a water stop was coming before mile 4 mat. To just keep whatever I was going to get that 28:34 consistent and I was a shoe-in to be happy with my time. I thought...however hard this gets...I can endure it for less than 2 miles.
The water stop was the most congested place last year and it was refreshingly pretty open this time. Something about making a turn into the stretch where both the aid stations and the mile 4 marker was gave me a little bit of extra pep and I did what I've never done before!!!...I GRABBED A CUP MID RUN AND I SLOWED ENOUGH TO JUST JOG WHILE TAKING TWO SIPS AND I DIDN'T GET DRENCHED OR BURP IT BACK UP!!! Sorry for the all caps...it was a momentous moment in my race career. My garmin said mile 4 WAAAAY too early, almost annoyingly so as I felt like that put the real marker on a string I had to pull towards me. Drunk Garmin said 8:12. There's 0% chance that is true. If it is (YAY ME) but I'm being realistic here. It beeped just way too early.

Fifth mile: I knew I had one mile left. I know it's a 4.97 mile race for basically all races have that extra fudge factor/tangent factor so I just decided to mentally just think of it as true 5.0 miles. I KNEW that Mt. Roosevelt was coming and I KNEW it was going to give me fierce lactic acid and it generally likes to kill my last .25 mile push once I get over it so I decided to just push HARD from mile 4 mat all the way to that hill. I saw a dude wearing his medal already cheering people on and that fueled my "OMG I'M ALMOST THERE" I was also a tad too excited that "Everyday I'm Shufflin" came on the playlist. That song has been in my head for about 4 days. Anyways, I was pushing. Same good form, just putting what felt like real Power behind everything. I was for sure chomping so many people at this point. And then THAT HILL!!! DUN DUN DUN.
I will say it was probably my best hill performance to date. But the bar has been pretty low already for that. I didn't do a good job of staring up at the horizon. It just felt too far away. So I literally stared at a girl's shoes in front of me a ways and just piston armed and said very very bad words in my head. My legs were burning. I NEED TO DO MORE HILL TRAINING! It's possible I pushed too hard coming into this hill but at least it gave me a good running start. I'm not too proud to admit I came to a walk about 2/3rds up. I don't know why...I walked for about 5 steps and said out LOUD to myself "NO!" (the way you'd say to a dog about to pee on a carpet" I think I may have scared some people??? And then I ran again. The lactic burn seemed to go away after my short little walk lapse so maybe it helped? I dunno. All I know is I felt UBER SUPER strong in my final straightaway to the finish. Perhaps because I sneaky peaked at my watch and although it said I was running a 3.25 min mile (so drunk) the time was 45 something. HOLY BLEEP I WAS GONNA DO IT! I pushed as hard as I could to keep that 45...I looked at my watch at least 4 times as the second counted up. I had a huge smile plastered on my face as I crossed the finish and I was SO SO happy with my 46:09 (officially 46:08)
My first thought was "how the heck did I do that...OMG I DID THAT!"
I feel like I could've kept going but also that I really was happy not to keep going. Like my body was ready to be done. This 5 miles at this effort was both easier than I thought it would be but still hard. I think this was the best I could have done that day :)
Drunk Garmin said I ran 5.22 miles with 9:16 fifth mile and 8:43 for .22 miles??? Looks like per social media A LOT of people had similar distances. I won't dwell on it, could've been true or just wacky signals again. I would think a race this size would be accurately measured so I'm going with official vs garmin here.
Oh, and I finished not too far behind the actual "green painted people". They had a line just to get a pic with them almost immediately after they finished. Reminded me of disney character lines. Dry, but sweaty paint is gross y'all! Poor race guy trying to get them to move along!!!

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I took my time getting photos taken with my SWEET MEDAL! And my free snackage. I wolfed down a banana, two cereal bars, a cup of gatorade, and a full water bottle. My body was like "gimme gimme." I did some light stretching and then hubby came in 3 full minutes faster than last year! PR day!
His Dad had back surgery last fall and this was his first race and he wanted to be an hour or more (meaning he didn't want to push it) and got a 1:06 which post-surgery is super great! And he said he felt good. Success all around!
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We walked back to the condo without doing the free beer thing (was a tad chilly still, especially post-sweatyness.) There was still a sea of people rounding the corner for the final mile and so I tried to take pics. Everyone was still running so that was fun to watch as usually I'm seeing walkers by the time I'm heading home. We actually ran about .1 mile with the field as our way to cross the street. I hope us running with our medals wasn't too annoying to anyone around us. We were being very polite about falling in and back out of the crowd.

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I think by the time I got out of the shower at the condo and was all dressed the final walkers finished up the hill (we can see it from the window.) And that was about 10:30 ish. And then the road was opened back up like nothing ever happened.
We were supposed to go the Hawks game at 11:30 and we actually physically walked out into the hallway towards our car but we had been sitting I think too long and both of us were like "oh no!" The post-race stiff body thing was in full effect. We played a game of "do you want to stay and not go to the game" chicken with each other until we both decided we'd rather eat lunch with kiddo and hang out for awhile (without moving much) and not sit in tiny game seats for hours. So yeah....we are bad hawks fans for the day.
But we were able to eat (maybe too much?) pizza and take an amazingly long nap (like 2:00ish to 4:30!) once we got home.

My final stats:
46:08,
9:17 avg pace
(28:34 at 5k mat, 9:12 pace)
365th of 1856 F35-39 Division, 19%
2333 of 11308 Female, 20%
6551 of 20001 Overall, 33%



Thoughts heading into my first half marathon. I feel like the distance training has helped me so much mentally push through when things get hard. It's helped me know I CAN do things so I just push to try to do them in the moment so much better than a year or two ago. And I feel physically stronger and more in control. However, doing that effort for 13.1 seems....woof...I dunno? I guess my pace is slower for half right...obviously. And I gotta keep trusting the numbers (because the 46:12 was afterall scarily accurate)
But I think I'd still like to take the first half or 10k of my half marathon a little easier and sight see it a bit and then maybe I can push it at the end. I noticed I didn't sightsee so much this race. You'll notice I didn't describe the people around me as much or the stuff around me. I was tunneled in and focused this time.


Oh, and I did have a beer at home with dinner and hubby had the great idea that I should use my medal to open it...and I did :)

Thanks all for the nice words and the encouragement. I know I'm still not an elite runner, but I'm feeling pretty incredible at what I've accomplished. And incredibly tired. Thank heavens for rest days!

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WOOHOO!!!!! Great race recap. Your medal and your shirt look so good together. :D

I laughed out loud imaging you scolding yourself as you started walking up that hill. I might know someone else who has done that before. :rolleyes1 Although I think my words were more like, "Don't be a kitty (only I didn't say kitty :P)", so sometimes that out loud attitude adjustment does help.

Congratulations on a great race.
 
Great race report!! You rocked it and deserved the pizza... never too much! ;) I hate hills and my heart sped up while reading about your exciting hill climb.. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the latte I'm drinking. Speaking of which... boo to Starbucks being closed. Shame on them!
 
Awesome, awesome job. Your hard work has really paid off...it's been fun to watch you come so far (literally and figuratively!).

Just think...soon...:tinker::tinker::tinker:
 
WOOHOO!!!!! Great race recap. Your medal and your shirt look so good together. :D

I laughed out loud imaging you scolding yourself as you started walking up that hill. I might know someone else who has done that before. :rolleyes1 Although I think my words were more like, "Don't be a kitty (only I didn't say kitty :P)", so sometimes that out loud attitude adjustment does help.

Congratulations on a great race.

I'm secretly hoping I have a "grumpy cat" type looking race photo from that hill this year! To truly commemorate the experience :)

Great race report!! You rocked it and deserved the pizza... never too much! ;) I hate hills and my heart sped up while reading about your exciting hill climb.. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the latte I'm drinking. Speaking of which... boo to Starbucks being closed. Shame on them!

Luckily, Dunkin Donuts stepped up to the plate this morning with their Butter Pecan spring flavor being available. My order of preference though is: Starbucks>Dunkin>Hills

Awesome, awesome job. Your hard work has really paid off...it's been fun to watch you come so far (literally and figuratively!).

Just think...soon...:tinker::tinker::tinker:

Tink was starting to get "real" but emergerd now it's getting really really real!
 
Awesome race report!! I'm wondering, do most US races require a POT or was your corral assigned by your predicted finishing time?
 
Tink Training Week #12! Just keep running, Just keep running.
Ok so I guess today is rest day and then it's just back at it! No rest for the wicked and all that jazz.

Before I write up my weekly plan I just have to give a shout out to the psychic @DopeyBadger who eerily pinpointed my 8k finishing time waaaaay back when he put my Tink training plan together and knew I had that race. He said 46:12. He was pretty much on the nose. In the numbers we trust!
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I guess this pattern of me going "no way can I do this predicted time" and the doing the predicted time and then looking at the next race and going" no way I can do that predicted time" will probably continue on into infinity until I just stop it and start saying "yep, I can do that"
Easier said than done, right?

Monday 4/3: Rest (thank god)
Tuesday 4/4: 4 mi EA
Wed 4/5: STIR IT UP!
Thur 4/6: 1mi WU, 5mi Tempo, 1 mi CD (so essentially the Shamrock Shuffle again, but I get 48+ minutes to finish the hard part) It says blind, but it's TBD about if I can get it done outside or not.
Fri 4/7: REST!
Sat 4/8: 4 mi @ EA
Sun 4/9: 8 mi @ LR and an Easter Egg Hunt!

 
Awesome race report!! I'm wondering, do most US races require a POT or was your corral assigned by your predicted finishing time?

This one you needed proof of time to get into the higher corrals. Not all races I do need proofs (for instance the Rock N Roll races don't ask for them) and my local races don't even have corrals. So I'd say, including Disney, I do about 3 races per year that I need proof for and the rest I don't.
 
loved reading the race recap! That race really looks like a lot of fun. And how awesome to have your hard work pay off with PR!! Thanks for the example/inspiration! :)
 
Found my way over to read your race report....congratulations!!! When your hard work rewards you, there is almost no better feeling. :cool1:


I may have also chastised myself out loud during my race yesterday. Kind of surprised myself.
 
loved reading the race recap! That race really looks like a lot of fun. And how awesome to have your hard work pay off with PR!! Thanks for the example/inspiration! :)

Thanks! It is a fun race for sure; highly recommended!

Found my way over to read your race report....congratulations!!! When your hard work rewards you, there is almost no better feeling. :cool1:


I may have also chastised myself out loud during my race yesterday. Kind of surprised myself.

Maybe we were chastising ourselves at the exact same time?!!
 
Congratulations on your PR!

I guess this pattern of me going "no way can I do this predicted time" and the doing the predicted time and then looking at the next race and going" no way I can do that predicted time" will probably continue on into infinity until I just stop it and start saying "yep, I can do that"
Easier said than done, right?


It can be tough to believe sometimes, but yep, you CAN do that!

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
Muhammad Ali
 
Right after they started doing the announcements hubby pointed out a lady in front of me whose jacket was a 2016 Iron-man Finisher and then I noticed beside me was a woman probably 10 years my senior with a sweet blue striped Boston jacket. That's when I had a "Oh F" moment.

Think of it like this: you EARNED that corral placement just as much as an Ironman athlete and Boston marathoner. While their accomplishments may seem daunting, you deserved to be starting right next to them and even passing them. Don't doubt yourself.

(My SECOND FASTEST 5k! HUZZAH...and it felt 100% better than my fastest and third fastest 5ks in which I was near puke levels at the end....I find this to be just as big a success in my brain as the finish time. Because now at least I know that in a regular 5k I can probably push that third mile super hard and maybe just maybe eek a new PR this year....hmmmmm)

That's awesome to hear!

I GRABBED A CUP MID RUN AND I SLOWED ENOUGH TO JUST JOG WHILE TAKING TWO SIPS AND I DIDN'T GET DRENCHED OR BURP IT BACK UP!!! Sorry for the all caps...it was a momentous moment in my race career.

:woohoo:

I feel like I could've kept going but also that I really was happy not to keep going. Like my body was ready to be done. This 5 miles at this effort was both easier than I thought it would be but still hard.

Sounds like a race effort to me!

I think this was the best I could have done that day :)

Well that's a great way to look at it! :thumbsup2

I guess my pace is slower for half right...obviously.

::yes::

And I gotta keep trusting the numbers (because the 46:12 was afterall scarily accurate)

::yes::

I'm feeling pretty incredible at what I've accomplished.

You should be very proud! You crushed that sub 50 goal!

Before I write up my weekly plan I just have to give a shout out to the psychic @DopeyBadger who eerily pinpointed my 8k finishing time waaaaay back when he put my Tink training plan together and knew I had that race. He said 46:12. He was pretty much on the nose. In the numbers we trust!

Well a clock is right two times a day, so I guess I'm done for the year... :P

BTW, can't wait for our 10k in October. I've got a feeling you're going to like the results! :D Not that I've got a plan or anything... :D:D

I guess this pattern of me going "no way can I do this predicted time" and the doing the predicted time and then looking at the next race and going" no way I can do that predicted time" will probably continue on into infinity until I just stop it and start saying "yep, I can do that"
Easier said than done, right?

Definitely easier said then done. It's easy to come up with predictions/projections, but can we really hit those paces???
 

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