Our first official race is over and it was an interesting experience. It was fun for the most part. There were a couple frustrating things but all in all it was a good experience.
This was a valentines themed race so you had all sorts of people wearing all sorts of different valentines themed outfits. I think the best one was the couple, him in a nice suit and her in a nice dress, that had rigged up a table with dishes and champagne flutes and somehow hooked this on to the front of them. It looked like they were having a fancy dinner while they were running the race. When the pictures get posted I'll see if I can put up a link. I imagine it wasn't easy to run in but it looked cool.
There were upwards of 2500 people that turned out for the race. At the start they try to get everyone to get into groups based on your average pace per mile. This is great in theory as long as the people in front of you actually know what their pace is and don't have it in their mind that they are considerably faster then they really are. We lined up in the right spot for our pace and thought this is would work out just fine. As it turns out when the gun when off we thought we were going to start and then started to shuffle forward but the mass wasn't really moving. So we jumped out of the pack and waited to go at the end. Nate managed to somehow get himself into a position where he was able to move out pretty well and so did Jerry W who started with us but was able to get ahead too. So we finally got back in at the end of the pack and started the zig zag and running around process to get us moving past the walkers and slower runners. The most frustrating part was coming up behind the three women with the jogging strollers walking three abreast on the trail and leaving about 3 feet for the pack behind them to pass on their left. That was annoying because they were oblivious to the fact that they were blocking the trail for everyone else.
Once we got off the Green Lake trail and onto the streets the race took on a better flow and people could move at a pace they were comfortable with and not spend too much time dodging other participants. We pretty much ran a normal pace for us. We thought we were going slower but at the end when we got our official times we found that we were on our average pace. Of course Nate beat us pretty handily and unofficially Lisa and I tied as we crossed at the same time but somehow they placed me at 1922 and her at 1924. There was nobody in between us so I'm not sure how that works....
The gun time below is higher because it actually reflects the time we jumped out of line to wait for space. The time is the actual chip time from when we cross the starting line and registered our RFID to the time we crossed the finish line and recorded the end of the race. Jerry came in about a minute ahead of us.
Bib NO. OVERALL GUN_TIME TIME PACE
674 Nathan 1530 36:00 33:52 10:56
672 Bradley 1922 42:25 38:41 12:29
673 Elisabeth 1924 42:25 38:42 12:29
All in all it was a fun event. The gathering ahead of time was very festive, crowded but everyone was having a good time.
Now we keep training and increasing our mileage while I'm on the hunt for the 10K we want to do in late March or early April.
Onward!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
1 Week until our first official run
Next Saturday is the Love em or Leave em Valentines Day Dash at Green Lake. We have been keeping up on our training and we are getting a little longer and stronger.
This week was a little rough but we got through it. I mentioned before that Lisa has been having some trouble with her calf cramping up during the run. We've been researching what to do about it and how to treat it and I think we may have found some help. Lisa did a web search and came across another runner that described what Lisa has been feeling exactly. The other runner said that she was diagnosed with achilles tendinitis and the best treatment was alternating ice and heat. So beginning Thursday night and whenever she could on Friday and Saturday she started doing this and it seems to have paid off on our run Saturday.
The other thing we changed about our runs that seems to have taken a lot of pressure off is that we aren't being so rigid on the actual time we are running. This probably needs some explanation. We are on a training plan that is based on set times for the first 10 or 11 weeks. This means that one day our time goal was 20 minutes. The next run may go up to 25 and so on... We felt this pressure that we had to run this amount of time or we were doing something wrong or not succeeding or something. On Thursday as we were struggling to finish 30 minutes and Lisa was in a fair amount of pain she had the great idea that we didn't need to be a slave to the clock. In all our previous runs we would always stay together and it was very difficult. So we decided that we would start out together and if one of us needed a little walk break and the other didn't then that was fine. So now, instead of being joined at the hip, so to speak we are sort of leap frogging each other along the trail. We still workout for a set time or mileage period so that hasn't changed, just the way we do it. We did this for the first time on Saturday and I think we both enjoyed our workout a lot more. Not that we didn't like running together but this just seemed to allow us to tailor our workout to what our body was telling us. Plus as I mentioned Lisa wasn't suffering the pain she had been feeling and that made it better for her.
At one point on the Saturday run I was a ways back and Lisa was walking. I kept telling myself I'd take a little walk break when I caught up to her... The problem was she wouldn't stop moving. Took me a longer than I wanted before I got my little break. The other thing I noticed is that without the calf pain she is faster than I am. When we were both running she was always bit ahead of me and pulling away. I guess I need to work harder to keep up...
Not sure if I'll get another post up before the run next week. I'll for sure get something up afterwards and share the experience.
This week was a little rough but we got through it. I mentioned before that Lisa has been having some trouble with her calf cramping up during the run. We've been researching what to do about it and how to treat it and I think we may have found some help. Lisa did a web search and came across another runner that described what Lisa has been feeling exactly. The other runner said that she was diagnosed with achilles tendinitis and the best treatment was alternating ice and heat. So beginning Thursday night and whenever she could on Friday and Saturday she started doing this and it seems to have paid off on our run Saturday.
The other thing we changed about our runs that seems to have taken a lot of pressure off is that we aren't being so rigid on the actual time we are running. This probably needs some explanation. We are on a training plan that is based on set times for the first 10 or 11 weeks. This means that one day our time goal was 20 minutes. The next run may go up to 25 and so on... We felt this pressure that we had to run this amount of time or we were doing something wrong or not succeeding or something. On Thursday as we were struggling to finish 30 minutes and Lisa was in a fair amount of pain she had the great idea that we didn't need to be a slave to the clock. In all our previous runs we would always stay together and it was very difficult. So we decided that we would start out together and if one of us needed a little walk break and the other didn't then that was fine. So now, instead of being joined at the hip, so to speak we are sort of leap frogging each other along the trail. We still workout for a set time or mileage period so that hasn't changed, just the way we do it. We did this for the first time on Saturday and I think we both enjoyed our workout a lot more. Not that we didn't like running together but this just seemed to allow us to tailor our workout to what our body was telling us. Plus as I mentioned Lisa wasn't suffering the pain she had been feeling and that made it better for her.
At one point on the Saturday run I was a ways back and Lisa was walking. I kept telling myself I'd take a little walk break when I caught up to her... The problem was she wouldn't stop moving. Took me a longer than I wanted before I got my little break. The other thing I noticed is that without the calf pain she is faster than I am. When we were both running she was always bit ahead of me and pulling away. I guess I need to work harder to keep up...
Not sure if I'll get another post up before the run next week. I'll for sure get something up afterwards and share the experience.
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