Cowboy Hazel

I'm not going to write a long race report about today's race. Instead, just a few notes... To sum it up quickly: Nothing went right. I missed my goal by 8 seconds, finishing in 24:28 (a 6:07 pace), but I feel like that was due to a lot of circumstances that were outside my control... I couldn't get my Nike+ to sync up before the start (I think it was frozen) and so I was without a stopwatch. Then, the clock at Mile 1 was broken. So, I had absolutely no idea how fast I was going until the race was half way over! When I saw 10:50 on the clock as I passed Mile 2, I knew I was in serious trouble. That 5:25 pace is faster than my official mile P.R. – No way was I going to be able to sustain it for four miles in this brutal cold... Mile 3 was up Cat Hill (thanks for explaining to me why they call it that, Elizabeth) and everyone started passing me. It was so disheartening. I gave a big surge on the straightaway along Museum Mile and held off the people behind me for a bit, but another big crowd passed me as we were hitting the last hill before the finish. I'm an staunch believer in the theory that you take energy from people as you pass them. The inverse of that is so very true too – I felt destroyed by the time I finally hit the finish line and had been passed by probably thirty people... If the clock at Mile 2 was accurate, my second half of the race was 13:38 – that's over a minute per mile slower than the first half! Even for me, that counts as a pacing disaster... Positives to take away from this (I'm trying to remember to look at the half-full glass here): This was an automatic P.R. because it was my first 4 mile race ever, but it was also the fastest pace that I've ever run any race over a mile. So, even if it wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped, I am still happy with the time. Also, I finished 61st (and 16th in my age group) out of 4,872 runners so I'm back in the top 2% and earned back my button, TK. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how this leaves me for my race tomorrow... My foot was in so much pain and I'm feeling pretty drained. I couldn't sleep well at all last night because I was so nervous about the race (I had 3 dreams that I can remember of me crossing the finish line – 1 was faster, 2 were slower than in real life) and kept waking up thinking that I had overslept my alarm. And, I know it will be the same thing tonight if I decide to run tomorrow. I've never sat out a race I've registered for before, but tomorrow might be the first... My head is telling me not to push it, but my heart is telling me that I'm so very close to that beautiful 6-minute-mile mark that I just have to give it one last shot before the holidays. We'll see...