Running Log ~ March 17th

March 17, 2014 by Dawn Marie Leave a comment

Hi my name’s Dawn and I am an addict.

I am addicted to races.

I am not just addicted to running, but I am addicted to the actual race event.

I love preparing for the event. I love training with a goal in sight. A tangible goal that I can point to on a calendar.

And I am not gonna lie, it feels great to finish.

Even though I was one of 35,000 people participating in the event, I still finished.

With my own personal best time and distance. (4.97 miles in 1:00:56, place 5909 out of 6939)

Yeah, OK, so I have never done a race before, so I have nothing to compare it to, but still…

click pic for source

Let’s talk about the run.

I ran the first 3 miles, and then did walk/run intervals after that. I made sure that I was running as I crossed the line.

I found it really difficult to maintain a slow pace at the start. Everyone around you is running, some are passing you, you are passing others. It is really easy to get motivated to run. The excitement is palpable. You feel great, and you know you can run faster. But I also knew if I ran too fast at first I wouldn’t be able to keep it up and would end up walking more than I wanted to. So I had to keep telling myself to slow down.

Here is the course map:

8k course

The hardest part of the course, for me, was the straight away. You are just running in a straight line and you see all the other people who have already turned around and are heading back. It was kinda boring and a little frustrating, mostly because I had set a goal that I wouldn’t let myself walk until after the 3 mile mark. And I knew that wasn’t until after the turn around!

I realize now that I never should have walked. It was much harder to keep running after walking than it was to just keep running. I never walked for long, but I kept talking myself down. I kept thinking, I can’t run the whole time, I need to do walking intervals, it will be easier if I walk for a minute. But I was wrong.

I probably could have kept running, if only my mind would have kept its voice quiet.

I really want to be able to run a race a month. Races are expensive, but the money goes to charity, so that’s a good thing.

I have already signed up for my next race in April. I will be running the Bridge to Brews. You run across some bridges and after you get beer. What could be better?