100% Irish 10 mile RR

So-I've been a little absent lately. March for me is like April for accountants. Hockey is taking over my life! Soon to be done however, and then instead of sending my kids off to the rink in the evening I will likely have to play a million games of Skipbo and Farkle! Life will be very different for me in so many aspects in 5 short weeks:)

Anyhoo, in the midst of my hockey travel I ran a 10 mile race this weekend! This was my first ever 10 mile so a guaranteed PR. This was also my first race since October! I struggled deciding what I was going to do about this. Option #1- taper up and run the best 10 mile I physically could. This sounds delightful however the repercussions of resting might be detrimental to my crazy brain if I reduced my mileage drastically at this point in training. On the other hand a great time may be a great confidence builder. Option #2- don't reduce the mileage and still go out and run the best 10 mile I physically could. It would still be guaranteed to be faster than I could run outside of race conditions. Problem with this option is if I didn't do as well as I would like, I may lose a ton of confidence. Weighed them both and chose Option #2. Yes, I have issues!!!!!

TC 100% Irish for a Day 10 mile

time: 1:12:56
pace: 7:18
overall place: 99 out of 779
division place: 5 out of 93
gender place: 13 out of 411

Here's the rundown!!

Woke up to a six year old boy's feet kicking me in the face! For once, we were all traveling together and as I am entirely too cheap to get adjoining rooms Max ends up in bed with Joe and I. He is a monster and impossible to sleep with. I considered moving a pillow and a blanket into the bathtub. Anyway, I got up, showered and went down to eat before I woke up the kids. I am never hungry in the morning as I generally down about 2 pots of coffee (slight exaggeration but not much) and eat 2 hours later. Very healthy, I know! Anyway, managed to eat something and headed back up to get ready. Looked out the window and saw the trees blowing pretty good and rain drizzling down. Temps were in the 40's which is downright tropical to me so I was OK with the situation.

I got all my crap on and attempted to stretch a little bit in my ridiculously cramped hotel room. I have too many kids! I decided to go with shorts since the pants I brought were not super fitted on the bottom and I was afraid they would get wet and I would trip on them (see last race report)!



Headed out with my three overjoyed children and Joe dropped me off fairly close to the start about 35 minutes before race time. I was wearing sweatpants over my shorts but no jacket because I thought they would have some sort of shelter to warm up in. WRONG! Turns out 17 mph winds make 40 degrees feel a lot colder and I was freakin' freezing standing outside waiting. I did meet a couple of super nice funny guys while I was waiting and one of them gave me a bright green shag blanket! Looked very Austin Powers and I was a little worried about what might be ON the blanket but I was seriously too cold to care!


OK- the poor guy in the gray tights and yellow shirt obviously doesn't have a wife to dress him! Not trying to be mean just feeling bad for the guy!

We made our way to the start about 5 minutes before the gun and I lined up about 10 seconds off the start. Right before the gun, I went to set my Garmin and saw the data from the previous days run on the training screen. I tried to reset it but the stupid thing was frozen. Gun went off and I didn't have time to shut the thing off and restart it. Decided this was not the end all be all and just started running. Now, normally when I start running in a race I almost dislike the feeling I have in my legs. They are like Jello and buzzing with adrenaline. Today, not so much! They felt tired and heavy. I kept telling myself they would warm up about mile 3 and to push through. Didn't help that we were running directly into the wind and I was close to the front so not too many people to hide behind. In fact, within a mile I was pretty much all by myself with the nearest runner at least 10 strides ahead of me.

There was a clock at mile one and I crossed in 7:30. I was hoping to be under 7:20 so I panicked for a second and then told myself to relax and pick it up a little bit. Things started getting better in mile 2. Water stop around mile 3 which I skipped and grabbed a drink from my kids who were spectating there! I had run the course on Thursday so I knew I was headed for a nice downhill right after mile 3. It was actually pretty steep and I had to remind myself how to run going down-way too much flat country up here!!




The world's best but also the world's boredest (is that a word?) specatators!!

It was not raining but the road had several areas that were completely submerged in water. I tried skipping around a bit but soon gave up and just plowed through. I was soaked!

About mile 4 after the hill I caught a runner with a Garmin and asked our pace. He said 7:02. I was feeling comfortable but again quickly panicked as I thought I might die about mile 8 and pulled up the reigns quite a bit. Came across the 5 mile and clock read 36:20. I was planning to take a gel about mile 5. Turns out there were only two water stops at 3 and 8 which I didn't know ahead of time. I really wish I would have brought my handheld because I ended up downing the gel at 5.5 and almost threw up because I had NO water! This didn't affect my running in the race but I had a stomachache for the rest of the day from this.

Kept trucking along and I was feeling alright. Knew my kids would be at mile 6 so I was looking forward to running by them. Also, excited to get the water that they forgot to hand me!! I think I was running fairly evenly but I was starting to feel a bit tired and was starting to think I was glad I was only running a 10 mile and not a half. Somewhere around mile 6 we merged with the 5K which is always fun as it was the back of the pack and required a lot of "polite" elbowing! Between mile 7 and 8 were a couple of real nice uphills that I could have done without. What goes up must come down however and I could relax on the downhills. Crossed the 9 mile mark and considered picking up the pace-also considered walking-Did neither-Ha! I crossed the finish line, saw my time on the finish clock and was glad to be done and happy enough with my time!



I had a free beer coupon on my bib and went to redeem it for my husband and they carded me! I'm 34-got a good laugh out of this one but-NO ID, NO beer! Had to hurry back to the hotel and had exactly 18 minutes to shower and get ready for the hockey game!!

Weekly running totals: 63 miles

Monday-skating which absolutely killed my quads and I can still feel them.

Tuesday-10 miles with 6X800's

Wednesday-11 miles @ 8:02

Thursday-9.6 miles on race course in pouring rain @ 8:15

Friday-2 miles @7:54

Saturday-10 mile race @ 7:18

Sunday-20 miles at 8:14. I was planning on running this 20 tomorrow after work but really wanted to get it out of the way and really didn't feel bad after yesterday's race. Still managed to stay right around my 8:12 goal pace.

Hope you all had great weekends! I've got a date with the computer to catch up after my hubby goes to work tonight!!