Tipperary Hill 4 Mile Shamrock Run

Wow, it's snowing today. Big Surprise. But I guess I can be grateful for the fact that it wasn't like this yesterday.  Yesterday it was just rainy and chilly, with some crazy wind gusts.  But I'm happy with how my race went, as well as the time we spent post-race.

My only plan was to beat my time from last year, and to run strong.  The organizers changed the course a bit, and my fellow runners agreed, they made it harder.  The course starts off with a long stretch of downhill, goes up one hill, then down, up a second hill, with a steep downhill.  The last mile is pretty much ALL uphill, and its a doozy.

I set G-unit to alert me if my pace went above 8:45. Right from the start I knew I was going too fast, and I was wasting energy trying to get around people because it was crowded, we were running city streets, but they weren't very wide, and there were cars parked along the sides as well.  It was really windy at times, several people lost their hats! This part is gross, at one point I really had to spit, so I went toward the side, and let it go......right up into a gust of wind....and into the guy running behind me!  I said "sorry Dude" then I sped up.

I kept up the pace, up until about mile 2.5, which was a bit of a hill.  I was getting tired.  During the two training runs I did for this, I ran a 9:30 pace the whole time, so when I got to the end, I had enough in me to sail up the last part.  I had about .90 miles left, and G-unit said 27:00! I couldn't believe it, but I was getting tired.  Plus it was windy, and I felt myself slowing down.  For a split second I even felt like stopping, but I was like, "are you kidding me?? you've never stopped on this course, why would you do it now?!?"  So I just kept my head down, kept moving, I even chicked some younger guys (love doing that). When I saw the Stop sign at the top, I knew the worst was over, and but I had one more slightly uphill loop around the park until I got to the finish. I was so glad to be done.

I looked at G-unit, and I knew I made my goal of finishing sooner than last year.  G-unit said 38:19, which matched my chip time.   The funny thing is, it's exactly one minute faster than my time for 2010.  One minute PR? I'll take it.

We headed on to Coleman's, where the husbands had scored some great real estate at the bar.  It was nice to be out, during the day no less, with the kids back home with the sitter.  We chatted away, and my friend Heather and I decided to do our own Biggest Loser Challenge.  We both want to drop a few pounds before our next race, the Mountain Goat 10 miler in May.  I think we're going to start on Wednesday, since it's Lent, and this year I decided to give up chocolate.  We have to work out the details, but I think it should be a good competition.

I'm also going to do the Cupcake Challenge, over on Jason's blog.  I signed up to run 26.2 miles between March 14 and the 26th, so that should also help get me in a weight loss mode.  You can still sign up, check it out here if you'd like.  There are some great prizes, such as GU and a SPI Belt, with the big prize being cupcakes!  Which kind of defeats the weight loss purpose, but I can't say no to a fun race like that!

Have a happy week!