Well we did our first 10K race tonight after work, the
Meriter Nurses Day Run. We left right after work (to get there in time to register - I forgot to get us
pre -registered for
this one -
Oops!).
The race began behind the
Vilas Zoo in Madison and wound around behind
Edgewood College, around the golf course and through the arboretum. It was uphill the first half and mostly downhill on the second half, which was a nice break. It was shady and pretty, keeping us pretty cool despite the near 80 temps. In the arboretum, I had a pack of turkeys (what is the plural for turkeys - flock? gaggle? I don't really know....) that was across the street in the brush and I worried for a time they might swarm me and start throwing spurs as they started to run parallel to me along the other side of the road, but they eventually stopped and stayed put.
When I reached the mile marker for mile 4, in my head I mistakenly thought I had
only a mile left to go and a lot
of gas in the tank so I took off as fast as I could go. As I was running that mile, I redid the math
in my head and realized that there were TWO+ miles left and so I slowed it up a little until I got to mile marker 5. (mental note: never rely on math done in your head while trying to run fast , especially when cursed with a fuzzy math gene.) After that, I took off and ran the last 1.2 miles as fast as I could.
I am feeling pretty good about the race. My
Garmin time was 1:10:04, no official results are posted that I can find yet. I finished it, I did my best, I had fun, I managed to pass at least 6 people,
in fact all of them I set in my mind to play cat and mouse with, and - BONUS - I was injury-free (this was the same course I sprained my ankle on in
September at the Zoo Run Run).
Today is national Nurses Day. Take a minute next time you see a nurse and thank her/him for all they do to help make/keep you healthy. Like everyone else, we work hard for too little appreciation sometimes and it's good to hear that we have made a difference in
someone's life.
UPDATE: The official results are up and can be found by clickinghere.The highlights are:
286/294 overall, 46/50 age group, 145/152 female, 11:17 pace, 1:09:44 chip time.
The race began behind the Vilas Zoo in Madison and wound around behind Edgewood College, around the golf course and through the arboretum. It was uphill the first half and mostly downhill on the second half, which was a nice break. It was shady and pretty, keeping us pretty cool despite the near 80 temps. In the arboretum, I had a pack of turkeys (what is the plural for turkeys - flock? gaggle? I don't really know....) that was across the street in the brush and I worried for a time they might swarm me and start throwing spurs as they started to run parallel to me along the other side of the road, but they eventually stopped and stayed put.
When I reached the mile marker for mile 4, in my head I mistakenly thought I had only a mile left to go and a lot of gas in the tank so I took off as fast as I could go. As I was running that mile, I redid the math in my head and realized that there were TWO+ miles left and so I slowed it up a little until I got to mile marker 5. (mental note: never rely on math done in your head while trying to run fast , especially when cursed with a fuzzy math gene.) After that, I took off and ran the last 1.2 miles as fast as I could.
I am feeling pretty good about the race. My Garmin time was 1:10:04, no official results are posted that I can find yet. I finished it, I did my best, I had fun, I managed to pass at least 6 people, in fact all of them I set in my mind to play cat and mouse with, and - BONUS - I was injury-free (this was the same course I sprained my ankle on in September at the Zoo Run Run).
Today is national Nurses Day. Take a minute next time you see a nurse and thank her/him for all they do to help make/keep you healthy. Like everyone else, we work hard for too little appreciation sometimes and it's good to hear that we have made a difference in someone's life.
UPDATE: The official results are up and can be found by clickinghere.The highlights are:
286/294 overall, 46/50 age group, 145/152 female, 11:17 pace, 1:09:44 chip time.