Winter Series 5k - December 7, 2014
This was the race where everything went wrong - I forgot my earbuds; I forgot my Garmin. I thought I was doomed from the start. But I improvised.
I decided I would play my music anyway and share it with the other runners; as a friend said, if they didn't like it, they could just run faster (for the record, it wasn't very loud and I doubt too many others heard it). And without my Garmin, I had no way to keep track of run/walk intervals. So with my Christmas music playing from my phone's speaker, I decided I would run when I could and walk when I had to.
I ended up running more than I thought I would. Yes, I was slow and miles (minutes?) away from breaking my 5k PR, which I set at this race way back in 2011, but it went better than I expected.
And someday, someday, I'll set a new PR. Don't know when that will be, but probably won't be until I actually start seriously trying to train to do it instead of whatever it is I'm doing these days. ;-)
Race Stats:
Finish time: 32:44 (Nike+); 32:56 (official)
Pace: 10:32mpm (Nike+);
Place: 256 of 342
Winter Series 8k - January 4, 2015
Slightly rainy weather + no training = another race where I should have been doomed from the start (although I did have the gadgets with this time). I managed to run my run intervals at a decent speed and my walk intervals were slow enough to recover, but fast enough to not slow me down too much overall. I kept a pretty consistent pace and was happy to cross the finish line in under an hour, which was something I didn't think I'd be able to do.
Race Stats:
Finish time: 59:32 (Garmin); 59:37 (official)
Pace: 11:49 (Garmin)
Place: 266 of 317
Winter Series 10k - February 1, 2015
Weekends in February mean one of the days needs to be a long run day to get ready for the Princess Half. Therefore (when you've worked for lawyers, legal-speak sneaks into normal writing every now and then), I needed to get in a double digit run on one of the 2 days of this weekend. It didn't happen on Saturday, so I planned to break it up with a few miles in the morning and then the race on Sunday afternoon. That didn't happen either.
So I got to the race early and squeezed in 3.25 miles before it started. Thankfully, it was one of those "the longer I go, the better I feel" days, so the 6.2 miles of the race went really well. I came really close to negative splits on every mile, which is awesome and something I haven't done for a while. Not gonna lie, it was hard, and I pushed myself harder than I have in a long time to do it (which caused some concern for my mother (ever the mom and ever the nurse) when she decided she needed to check my pulse after I finished; I felt fine but, well, she's my mom (and a nurse) so... ;-) ) Anyway, I managed my 2nd fastest 10k time.
Race Stats:
Finish Time: 1:12:29 (Garmin); 1:12:41 (official)
Pace: 11:38mpm (Garmin)
Place: 231 of 281
Series as a whole
As you can see, the theme of this year's Winter Series was apparently "Races I signed up for but neglected to train seriously for." The 10k was a little better training-wise, because being in February, it falls into the "OMG, the Princess Half is coming up fast!" training panic time frame that hits about mid-January and makes me start taking my running a little more seriously. (Still not seriously enough, but that's another story.)
Apparently I have enough of a fitness-base to pull off these races by the skin of my teeth, but I know that if I'd just work a little bit harder, they could go so much better. Maybe 2015 will be the year that I re-find my motivation and drive to do better. Hopefully.
Series Stats:
Finish Time: 2:45:14
Place: 177 of 221
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