Lady Distance Classic 10K and Getting in Twelve

Saturday morning I got up at 5:00 a.m. to run the Lady Distance Classic 10K with Krista, who I've been running part of my long runs with on the weekends. I was supposed to get 12 miles in this day, so the plan was to warm up for 2 - 3 miles, run the race, then cool down for 3 - 4 miles.

We parked and apparently this is what you do as soon as you get out of your car... pin on your number.



















Ready! Pictures courtesy of Greg who got his butt out of bed to come watch! :)


















I warmed up for just 1 mile. I hadn't found Krista yet and was kind of anxious about that, so I headed back to the shelter where I left Greg and looked some more. Eventually we found each other. Here we are pre-race.














The race is a lot bigger this year than when I did it about 4 or 5 years ago. The plan was to just finish it. This was Krista's first 10K, though she's ran a 7 mile leg of the Pig Relay before, but it had been awhile.

After the gun went off, the pack was pretty tight. We were going along at an easy pace. Not too far into the race came the psycho-stroller women. There is a jog stroller division which started with the walkers, 3 minutes behind the runners. Apparently there were some fast, competitive stroller runners. We began to hear "On your left!!" and "Move over!! Move over!!" from behind us off to the left. About 3 or 4 women pushing their kids in jog strollers were very rudely fighting to get through the crowd, which I might add was wall to wall people spanning the two lanes of the road. For some reason, they expected the sea of runners to part for them. A couple of them made it through. Then one of the women who was still stuck behind someone kind of veered off the road, catching the stroller in the grass (she was too close to the edge). The stroller tipped almost completely over and would have dumped her kid - she was at least intelligent enough to strap her kid in. She came to a halt, righting it. Now she was really pissed. She got back on the road and took it all out on a girl who just wouldn't move over (and was wearing headphones so that is probably why she didn't hear her yelling at her). Crazy!!! Krista said Psycho-stroller-ladies! and I began to have hard time breathing because I was laughing so hard. Since when is anyone supposed to make way for a stroller, even if there is a division for it? These women were ridiculous and dangerous. If you're that competitive, you should leave the kid at home and just run.

Anyway, after that, there wasn't anything else too eventful. Krista and I chatted away. We laughed when we passed the 5K finish turn-off... how tempting to just be done now!

Here we are after mile 4, feeling good.














The course doubled back on itself for a little bit. At mile 5 we climbed up a big hill, which we had previewed a couple of weekends ago when we came out to run part of the course. It was brutal. Conversation stopped. Krista did awesome and was ahead of me by quite a good distance. We rejoined at the top and here we are rounding a turn after that.



















The last part of the course was a slow uphill. I was hurting. I began to wonder how I was going to run 5 more miles after this.

Here we are coming to the finish. Pushing!






















We ended up finishing 1:05:31, which was a 10:34 pace. Krista did great!! We never had to stop and I think she felt good the entire time. Goal met!

After the finish.


















After the race, we walked around the festival that was set up in the park for a little bit, but it was super crowded. I had a banana, a cookie and downed a bottle of water, since as you can see from the pictures I sweat about a bottle of water per mile. Then we walked back to our cars and headed home.

I still had 5 miles to run.

In the car ride home, I tried to think of where I was going to run. I knew I couldn't go in the house when we got home or I'd never go back out (I wanted a shower sooo bad). So I thought it would be best of Greg dropped me off somewhere 5 miles from home so I'd have no temptations of not going or turning around early. It worked.

The first mile was harder than I thought it would be. My legs were very tight. I losened up a little bit after a couple of miles. Just keep running just keep running... Finally I finished, really done now with running for the day! My pace for those 5 miles was 11:10, but it felt slower.

It was a very fun race! I don't think I would have gotten up the hills without Krista there! And I'm glad I got the 12 miles in even if it was broken up a bit.