Running, running, running

Hey! I managed to make a new post in less than a month.

Technically, we have three race reports for ya - this time I'll try to make it short and sweet:

May 5
Mile High 5

Ran this 5-miler with one of my BF's friends who just got into running. My goal was 9:30 pace and I think I ended up clocking a solid 9:27. We ran out first mile together in 9:12, so we started a little too hard. His goal was 10-min miles and he ended up kicking my butt running an average of 9:11 pace (seesh). All in all, not awful, not great. I really felt how hard it was for me to keep up pace. The plan that day was to run 5 more later in the day (with the race and the warm-up, I had 6 under my belt) but I ended up super exhausted with a headache and opted to run 5 more on Sunday instead.

May 12
Westminster Women's Classic

Ran this 10-miler on a whim when I received a discount code. I hadn't run serious distance in about 2 weeks prior to this race and I knew I needed to get my act together for the half marathon the following week. My goal was sub 10-min miles considering how rough coming back from injury has been.

I told myself to start out slow, but still went ~9:20 for the first mile. To my surprise, I then held it for the next few too. Finished this race out in 96 min with a 9:38 min/mile average. I was pretty happy with that and it made me optimistic for the coming half marathon.

We got some pretty sweet medals too:

I later got home to find out I had placed 2nd in the female 20-29 age group and picked up this guy on May 18th:

Back reads "Female 20-29 Second Place"

May 19

Colfax Half Marathon

I was admittedly pretty freaked out about this one. It had been a while since my last half marathon and I really was hoping to run the race in ~2:07. Mostly, I really wanted to break 2:10. 

This time I resolved to take it out slow and I did. Pretty consistent 10-min miles. Mile 3 went through the Denver Zoo which was pretty cool and distracting. Nothing like running next to monkeys, elephants, rhinos, donkeys, emus, etc. It was only a quick mile in the zoo, but still pretty nice.

At mile 4 my iPod threatened low battery and I was NOT happy. I'm glad to say, it did not die. By mile 6 I started experiencing something I had NEVER experienced during the race: I needed to use the bathroom! WHAT?! I knew that I probably wasn't going to see another one until mile 8, but I wasn't about to run .25 miles back to the mile 6 stalls. I kept running and found one at 7.5 miles with no TP....awesome. I made it to mile 8, waited in line and started feeling a bit better. Still, it wasn't until mile 10 that I was able to grab some water and feel pretty recovered. So, in short, miles 6-10 really were not too good for me. Slow, uncomfortable miles.

Once I got to 10.25, I told myself no walking and I had to run to 11. I walked for 30 secs at 11 and resolved to run to 12. I drank water at the mile 12 water stop and ran to the finish. Those last 3 miles surprisingly were not all that bad!

With the bathroom breaks taken out (my garmin time:) the race was 2:12 and 10:06 min/miles. With the bathroom breaks (my chip time:) the race was 2:16 and 10:23 min/miles. I'm not too psyched about either time, but it is what it is. It's better than the last half marathon I ran in Colorado (2:17) and I have another one coming up in October so I've learned something and have a new time to beat. 

Also, SUPER cool medals that came with mini-medals (charms, essentially) attached to it that you can hook to a chain and wear as a necklace:

Shout outs to Kyle for getting a new PR on this race, Clayton for finishing with 0 training, and everyone else for doing a freaking half marathon!