I decided to not race today's race, but rather enjoy a nice run while trying to help Jenny get a PR. It was a pretty nice morning, temps in the 60's and not as much wind as there was at this race last year. Warmed up 1.2 miles before the race with some easy running. Lined up at the starting area with Jenny and Jamie and chatted with several people that I know from all the other races. For the national anthem they had some sort of problem with the recording, so they asked for a volunteer to sing it, talk about some pressure. The singer did a great job. Race started right on time and we got onto our pace. Plan was to do an 8:00 pace for the first third, 7:45-8:00 for the second third, and then try to go faster for the last third. First third went just as planned, but the second third was where we ran into some wind. So, we stayed on the same pace and would try to pick it up once we turned around at about mile 8. Once we hit the turn around, we picked up the pace a little bit and were going strong until right about mile 11, when Jenny caught a stabbing side stitch. She had to walk a couple of times, but was finally able to start running fully before we hit the mile 12 marker. So, with mile 11 at 8:49, the PR had mostly slipped away. However, since she was able to get going again, she came within a minute of her PR and was able to stay fast enough to get 1st place for the Halfathon series. My three previous races were enough for 2nd place in my age group for the series. I would have needed a pretty spectacular PR today to pull into 1st but might have ended up injured, so better safe than sorry!
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