mommyMuscle Races 4 the Cure

Hooray! I survived my first 6.2 miles on Saturday! And the good news is I'm ready to do it again, hopefully better. Brian decided he was going to run the 5k as well, so Friday night we dropped Todd and Hayley off at Nana and Papa's and we headed home for an early bedtime. We got up at 4:30am Saturday morning for a bowl of oatmeal and a banana (and lots of water). We were on the road to St. Petersburg by 5:30am and had no trouble getting parked. We were a little concerned because we'd heard that parking is a nightmare seeing as how 11,000 people turned out for the run/walk. My race started at 7:30am while the 5k didn't start until 8am so Brian headed off to register and I went to find my team, mommyMuscle. There were eight of us running the 10k and quite a few others running the 5k. It was a nice course along St. Petersburg Bay and throughout downtown St. Pete. I kept to a steady 10 minute pace throughout the race as I was really nervous about burning myself out. I'm not sure if it was the adrenaline of the race or not, but my "runner's high" which usually kicks in around mile four, never really happened so by the last mile I was ready to be done. My lesson of the day? Trust my Garmin, not the bystanders. Around 5.4 miles, people along the sidelines started yelling at us that the finish was just around the corner. I couldn't figure that out because my Garmin was saying that that we still had just under a mile, but I listened to the bystanders and picked up the pace only to REALLY regret it once I finally got around that corner and saw that indeed we had a good half mile left. I really had to push to get to the finish and was cursing myself for not trusting my faithful GPS. I think ultimately that last mile added a good minute or two to my total time.

Brian had a good race, although he'd probably disagree. He ran three eight minute miles. Show off! We had a good time and we're now officially "hooked." The winter is prime race season here in Florida and we're looking forward to creating some new PRs.