Shamrock 15K ~ Race Report

Coach Seth once told me if you have a perfect race it makes for a boring race report. So please be forewarned this is pretty boring :)

First off I’m not sure I would categorize this as a "race" since A. I didn’t taper, B. I didn’t go balls to the wall with 100% effort and C. I wasn’t serious about it and had some wine the night before :P. A girl’s got to live a little right? Anywho, pre race I met up with a bunch of TNTers that were doing the 15k (out of the 5k, 8k and 15k options). We did the usual pre race thing, chat, hydrate, warm up and stretch….then made our way to the glorious starting line. We’re waiting in the massive group line to start when some lady walks by and hits me in the knee (yes, they’re still scabbed over) with her bag. Ouch! Not a great feeling right before the race started. A minute or two later and the gun went off and we slowly made our way through the start. Now it gets pretty boring. The first 2 miles I went slow and easy, in fact I met up with Scott H and we talked most of the way. He made a little pit stop around PSU as I continued up Broadway. I spoke with a few people before this run and was advised to take it easy and slow during the first ½ since it was all up hill and Twilliger is no little hill, so that’s what I did. I took my time and conquered that hill effortlessly. Ok, there was a little effort, in fact more then I had intended. I wanted to keep my HR below 180 for the duration of the run but somehow that was just not possible. I avg’d 180-183 the whole time, although it didn’t feel like. My energy level was not taxed. Once I got to mile 5 I knew it was pretty much down hill from there. Normally the down hills kill me, not great on my knees. So in the back of my mind I just concentrated on keeping a loose upper body, allow my body to lean forward down the hill and not pound down on the road in front of me. This worked like magic! I avg’d 9 min miles up to mile marker 5 and I ended up with a 1:15:20 time. So somewhere around a 8:25 min mile avg, I made up some serious time on those down hills, yay Kat! I was really happy with my finish time. I wanted this to be a nice comfortable fun run and that’s what it was. At no point did I get any tummy cramps, leg pain, chest/breathing pain or excessive fatigue. I kind of felt like a tinkle bell flying along, don’t laugh : ) It does peak my curiosity as to what time I could have got if I went into this as a race. But really I don’t care much, the fun out weighed the thought. I kept my promise and met Michele at the end with her cup of wine; which we then raised up a toast to.

Oh yes, and the best part, the kiss me I’m Irish flair worked, some what : )