Today was the Pumpkin Run out in Riverton and Herriman. I ran this two years ago, coming off a PR at the St. George Marathon, feeling like I was running the strongest I'd ever run to that point, and totally had a bad race. My time was 41:20. It's still a mytery to me what happened that day. It was windy and a little cool and overcast, but that shouldn't have affected me that much, considering that everyone else I knew and was at least as fast as ran a lot faster than me. Anyway, I returned today to see if I could do better, plus it was a good way to get in a quality run, which I sometimes have trouble doing on Saturdays.
The day was nice, no wind, mild temps, shorts and t-shirt weather. Cheris, Julie, Rachel, and Eric were the ones there from the group. Lisa was helping organize things. So we took off and ran. One thing I'd forgotten was how difficult the course was. It's an out and back course, with the out having a lot of downhill, and, you guessed it, the back having a lot of uphill. I tried to keep a steady pace, trying to keep my form correct, keeping things feeling comfortably hard, with the emphasis more on hard. It was quite tough on the way back, dealing with all those hills. I wanted to stop and walk a few times, but resisted the urge. I finished in 37 minutes flat, so it was quite an improvement over two years ago. The others from the group all ran really strong, Cheris won, Julie 3rd and Rachel 4th (for the females). I wasn't too far behind all those young whipper snappers (Cheris I think was 35:56), so I felt pretty good about that. I'm hoping if the coming year can be the first year in like over 10 years where I don't have to deal with health issues (no more thyroid problems) and if I can keep from getting injured, that I can develop even more strength and speed. We'll see. For right now in this particular race, I was the fastest over 50--of course, there were only like two of us over 50, but I'll take it. |