Got a great crowd together for an awesome weekend in Lincoln City culminating with the 3rd Annual Lincoln City Half Marathon (for Lisa, Jordanne, and Anya, they dominate!) and 10k (for Kasey, Jeff, Brittany, Kevin, Justin, and I). The weekend was just gorgeous and today was no different, perfect blue skies and perfect temperatures (started around 40 but warmed up, with SUN the whole time!). Out along a lovely river with beautiful fields, cows, horses, donkeys, forests, and just general loveliness. This race was weird because the night before we pretty much all decided to do the Half Marathon instead of the 10k, but I couldn't decide so literally in the first 3 miles I wasn't sure what to do. But I started too fast for a half, trying to keep up with Kasey, and at mile 3 I had to decide if I was either going to slow down and do the half or speed up and do the 10k. Speeding up sounded like more fun. :-) Hit the gas in Mile 4, caught up to Kevin and passed him, then in mile 5 with about a mile to go or so I saw this older lady (45?) in blue waaay up ahead. I really really wanted to catch her, but it felt impossible because we seemed to be going the same pace, and I was already really suffering and going about as fast as I thought possible. But slowly I closed some of the gap, and at one point she looked behind to check out the competition and locked eyes with me and she sped up and I thought it was over. But finally with about .1-.2 to go I caught her! She gave me this defeated look and fell back, I felt kinda bad. But not really. :-) This race felt GREAT. No it wasn't a PR (about a minute off), but coming off of a winter of ITB problems and resting, in the first race of the year, this feels AWESOME. I'm excited to keep training. Two-thirds of the runners did the Half, not the 10k, which boded well for me because I got THIRD. THIRD PLACE. That's right, third female overall, SHOCKING! (Now I'm sooo glad I killed myself passing that lady!) No award though, but I did get a ribbon for 2nd in my age group. We cleaned up in the 10k since there wasn't anyone, Brittany, Kasey, and Jeff all got ribbons too! Cooled down by doing 4.2 more (very easy) miles to round it out at 10.4 while waiting for the half marathon people to finish. They had a delicious spread of fruit, awesome bread, Mo's clam chowder, girl scout cookies, and the most delicious thing EVER, which turned out to be Dave's Killer Bread Sin Roll or something like that. I will definitely be purchasing some of those. So proud of everyone, such a fun weekend. And especially proud of Justin, who did his first ever 10k in under an hour! I only wish I wasn't so tired and it wasn't the start of another work week (including the last crazy week of the quarter). TT: 49:50 AP: 8:01 Splits: 8:39, 8:18, 8:25, 7:49, 7:49 (had the big hill), 7:19, 7:04 (.22)
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