work out wednesday: PR edition

Thanksgiving week had some personal records in my running life that I am kind of excited about. A little recap:

I wore through my shoes faster than normal with all the half-marathon business, and it was time for a new pair already. I am loyal to my Nike Pegasus shoes, so I was extra excited about the deal I got (in my one bit of black Friday/cyber Monday shopping): $40 with free shipping. That's over half off! Best price I've ever gotten by far.

And aren't they snazzy? The design is part of a Nike line honoring/encouraging Native American athletes; the flashy colors made me nervous about ordering them at first, but the good price won out. And now when I am running and start to feel a little tired, I just have to look down at my feet and I feel fast again.

On Thanksgiving morning, I ran in my first 10k race - the 102nd annual Thanksgiving Day race in downtown Cincinnati. I came in around 1300th, which doesn't sound impressive until you know there were more than 13000 participants. It was nuts. But kind of fun for the tradition and for getting to run into Kentucky for part of it (though now I realize that bridges are just really long hills... so difficult!). I imagine it's fun annual event for a lot of families to do together and lots of people just go out to have a good time in pilgrim costumes or turkey feather hats. But I've realized I'm too goal oriented to ever be casual about running... I wanted to break 50 minutes, and so I ran hard and had my best 10k time yet: 48:20.

I'm always glad I did the run after it's over, but running a 10k at race pace is really hard! I had to use my mental stamina a few times.

Same thing with this one: the weekend before Thanksgiving I participated in a Girls on the Run 5k. This is a great program for 3rd-8th grade girls that's not only about running/exercise-related life skills but also about development of emotional and social well-being. They hold a 5k event at the end of each 12-week program for all the girls, plus family members and anyone from the public who wants to join in. I had a friend doing it, so I decided to sign up too.

So this event was all about self-esteem and encouraging girls in completing the race (and they were sooooo excited at the starting line: lots of screaming and squealing), and most of the adults running seemed to be in a mentor/coach position to run alongside and encourage specific girls, but I couldn't help myself... I figured if my first race ever was a 5k at 8:14 pace, and I've since run an entire half marathon at 8:15 pace, then I should most definitely be able to do this 5k in under 8 minute miles. Plus it's not very far... So I just ran as hard as I could the whole time and ended up at about 23:00. That's 7:24 per mile! I kind of wanted to die for a little bit there, especially to maintain the speed for the last mile, but it felt good to have by far my best time. When it was over.

It was a petty low key event, so there was no official time recording or placement listing, but as far as Peter and I could tell, I was about the 5th person to finish. I will revel in this - despite all the supportive dads rolling in at about 40 minutes who looked super fresh and obviously could have beat me if they weren't busy being supportive mentors and coaches - since it's unlikely to happen again. Sorry 10-year-old girls. I took all of you (and that guy at the end).

And that pretty much concludes my running excitement for the year. I'm much less of a fair-weather runner than I used to be, but now that it's getting below 30 degrees in the morning, I've reached my limit. Back to the treadmill!