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| No pictures this year...so this is from Google Images. |
The 2013 Shamrock Run is DONE!
This year was the best...I PR'd my 8k time by almost 5 minutes over my time from a couple of years ago. All the training that I put in for the past 7 weeks paid off! Tom did pretty well for his first run of the year too.
I extended an invitation to not only the paid personnel and volunteers, but to a few of the cadets who attend class at the station everyday. Drew Swanson decided that he would run this event and traveled with us on Sunday morning.
As much as I like to have Tom run with me, I like it when he runs his own race so that he gets an idea of how well he is doing too. So, having Drew run with him was a good option. Someone younger and might be able to challenge Tom a bit. As it turns out Drew hadn't run a whole lot in the weeks leading up to the Shamrock, only getting about two weeks of running in -training lite you might say. They had a good run together and they pretty much stuck together for the entire distance.
We started off kind of together - while Tom was getting rid of his sweatshirt the run actually started and Drew was ahead of me and I kept looking back to make sure that Tom was close by...eventually the crowd spread out and Tom and Drew were running together and I was slowly falling behind for the first mile or so. Then pretty soon I could no longer pick out Tom OR Drew's heads bobbing up and down ahead of me.
So, I was solo for pretty much all of the run. For me, running alone is a total mental game. I have to continually tell myself that I can do it...I don't have to stop and I don't feel bad. Seriously, EVERY single run, race or not. I spend a lot of time trying NOT to give in to my negative thoughts and trying to continually fill my mind with happy thoughts so I can enjoy the run. It takes some work, but I eventually get over the fact that I want to stop...it's windy...the sun is in my eyes...etc.
Finally, the positive self talk started to stick and I finally made it to the turn around and decided to walk a little - what I really wanted was water, which was a little further down the road than I thought it would be. So I estimated that I walked about 100 yards before getting my water and then started running again.
At that point I think I started to enjoy the run more and I thought that I would run until the next water stop and take a walk break. When I finally came upon that one it was so close to Broadway that I figured if I stopped I wouldn't make my time goal. So, I kept it up and tried to increase my speed little by little. In doing that, I was able to pass other runners on the hill - I'm usually the one being passed. When I reached Salmon Street it was time to turn and run DOWNHILL for seven blocks, woo hoooooooooo! With each block I was willing my legs to go a little faster, to lengthen my stride ever so slightly.
After steadily increasing my speed over those last blocks to the finish I started to feel more energy - and as I passed over the timing mat I stopped my watch I found that I had reached my goal with about 20 seconds to spare! My time (according to my watch) was 1:00:59 (12:17 mile)! It was the best moment...with no one to share it with :(
It took a couple of minutes to get through the finish queue and I was so excited that I had reached my goal...that I didn't really concern myself with finding Tom and Drew right away. Once I got away from most of the crowd I saw them about 1/2 a block away, walking away from the finish and noticed that there was a nice gap between the both of them, so I quickly caught up with them and stopped just a little behind them as they were walking along...it took a couple of seconds before they noticed that I had joined them!
According to Tom, they were stopped for traffic once (I was stopped twice) and then they were caught up in the "foot traffic" jam at the finish. They were basically walking through the finish chute. Tom stopped his watch at the time he thought they might have reached the timing mat if they were running around 52:30-ish (10:30-ish mile) the chip time was 55:30 - my chip time was 1:01:53, stupid cars ;)
So in the big picture, even with Tom and Drew running together, it wasn't so fast that I was so far behind them really. Drew for his part, got to experience a little bit of the Portland scene and how cool it is that the streets were closed off for such a huge event. Also, he did great for his first event run and even said that he would be interested in running the 15k next year! I think we have ourselves a new event running buddy!
The best part of the day was just having the opportunity to hang out with Drew and get to know him a little better. We spent a little time at Thatcher's Coffee at Grand Central before parting ways for the day.
Next up...Blue Lake Duathlon??? Not sure at this point, we'll see how finances work out by the time May rolls around, but I'm pretty sure that I'll train as if we ARE going to participate at Blue Lake this year. If not the next run will be the 4th of July run in Ridgefield. We'll see what other fun things come up in the mean time :)
