I'm a Happy Leprechaun!

Ready to run! 

The very first race I ever signed up for was the St Patty Day Run Tacoma last year.  I was training for a half marathon and figured it would be a good idea to get some sort of race experience before the big day arrived- and it looked like it would be a fun run.  I ran it with Cynthia, Jaime and Tiana and we dressed up in lots of cute green stuff and had a good run.  I learned a lot from that race such as how to pin on a race bib, tie on a chip timer and what to wear.  We also learned the hard way that getting as far forward as possible is a great idea when there are over 1,500 runners- we couldn't even start running for quite a while that day.  Kind of like herding cattle.  Anyways, it was a great first race and of course I had to run it again this year.  My first repeat race!!!!

Last years race!  Jaime, me and Cynthia.  Tiana is MIA.

Well, I woke up this morning at the lovely hour of 6:45am and looked outside...guess what it was doing?  Pouring rain, not that I would have expected anything else really!  I had a quick breakfast consisting of an almond butter and strawberry preserves sandwich and a dopio espresso to get me going.  Then went in and got decked out in my spiffy outfit, complete with new running skirt and awesome knee high socks for the occasion.  I didn't bother with any of the stickers I got- I assume they would have just made a mess out in the downpour anyways.  Tied a few ribbons in my hair and pinned some butterflies on my jacket (in honor of my missing buddy Cynthia-my first race without her- who loves butterflies).  And I was ready to hit the road! 

Hanging out in the rain waiting for mom.  love the chipmunk cheeks on Niko!

Will and the kids came down for support and we also picked up our friend Brian who was also running.  We found parking relatively easily (a miracle) and headed towards the starting line.  Did I mention that I had a scheduled 7 miler today?  And the race was a 5K?  Time to do some math!  No worries, I had a plan all figured out.  I did a quick 1 mile warm up before the race started and then ended up way too far back in the crowd at the starting gun.  DANG IT!  I had to do some fancy maneuvering and probably made some people mad cutting through the crowd, but seriously- its a race people- RUN!  I couldn't believe all the people walking up the very first hill! 

I should have been up here.  Instead I am pretty sure I was still behind the start line!  Darn.

Once I got into a decent stride it was game on.  I had my garmin and I was planning to keep around an 8:30 pace at the slowest.  My goal was to be in the 26 minute range.  I kept checking and it kept saying 7:57 or 7:45...but the pace felt ok so I just held it as long as I could.  I ended up pacing with a group of guys for most of the race.  I figured if I could keep up with them I was doing pretty good!  My mile splits- 7:53, 8:09 and 8:16!  And amazingly it felt pretty good, I was definitely breathing hard at the end but I recovered really quickly, took a quick picture and headed off to do the rest of my 3 miles!  Total distance for the morning was 7 miles in 1:03.

The finish line is near!

My stats:
Time:  25:02   Pace: 8:05
Overall:  210/1607
Female/My age group:  14/196
Female overall:  52/1,064


Brian and I all finished!  With the race anyways- I still had some miles to go!

Ok, NOW I am done with my 7 miles!

Wet girls after hours in the rain!

My time last year was 29:58.  I guess that would make this a new PR!  I am very happy with my progress as a runner.  I have come a long way in one year!  I also played a soccer game last night, I played goalie for the first half but I was missing running the field so I played the second half.  And I scored a goal!  The team we played is new to our league but they had all strong players and were pretty aggressive.  We held our own but still lost 6-10.  Well, the end of my 6th week of training is tomorrow.  That means I am 1/3 of the way trained up for my marathon!!! 

I was thinking Niko's shirt would make a good goalie shirt...maybe not.  But check out those guns!