Bolder Boulder

I ran my first 10K in Colorado today! Got up at 5am to get up to Boulder for my 7:09am start time for my qualifying wave. I ended up with a slower time than I wanted, but that is okay as the elevation is a big deal. I was 42nd in my age level out of 692. So now I have a goal for next year. Get back down into the 48 range. So I remember next year. Here are my split times.

Mile 1: 7:33.40 (started out good, but just couldn't maintain it)
Mile 2: 8:05.34
Mile 3: 8:20.47 (Must have been a big up hill here!)
Mile 4: 8:01.86
Mile 5: 7:52.57
Mile 6: 8:08.48

In two weeks I will be running a half marathon at 8000 feet! Not expecting a good time there.

The really cool part is I finished in the top 6% of my age level. I was aiming for top 5%, so I was close.

Race Season Begins

Fall marks the beginning of the running race season for me. The temps drop so I like to start to race. Today was the 6 Flags 5K run and both Dave and I completed the course. This is a tough one with the hills in the park. I didn't to anything great, but did place 1st in my age group. Dave did awesome, despite the hills. He completed a personal best and took almost 2 minutes off his previous best time. This year they had a santa clarita olympian hand out the awards. She competed in the track and field events in Beijing. Afterwards we got to enjoy some time riding the roller coasters at the park. It was overall a good day, now I'm exhausted and want a nap.

Gotta love it when...

..Brightroom comes to a race I'm running! I never really like photos of myself (I'd much rather be behind the camera) but I especially don't like most photos of me while I'm running. Not exactly the most flattering. Most of the time I have some painful look on my face. I guess this one isn't so bad. I've seen worse.

Santa Anita 5K Race

This past weekend was the Santa Anita 5K run. We do this every year. It’s a tougher course because there are some gradual uphills plus you run the last quarter of a mile or so on the dirt horse training track. I finished with a pretty average time for myself…24:31. Funny thing was the night before Dave and I were predicting our times and I said 24:31!
This is a big race with about 2000 people. I came in 7th in my age group and 44th overall female! Not bad since there were about 1000 females entered! Yipee! Dave ran the race to and maintained about the same time as previous years. I was really proud of him though because he ran about 1.5 miles straight and no walking!

Running as a 30 year old

So today was my first official race as a 30 year old. I've always heard the competition if much more fierce once you hit 30. For the last few years, I've pretty much showed up at all my races (except for the huge ones) expecting that I would win an award, and most of the time I knew I would place 1st. This year I ran in the palmdale run that I do every year. I did the 5K and the age group was 30-39! Since I haven't been training to hard, I wasn't sure what to expect out of myself. This is the same race that I did my personal best in last year (23:12), but I knew I wouldn't be able to beat that. I ran the first mile in 7:48, and ended up with a final time of 24:17. This was good, but not great for me. I was happy it was still under the 8 min/mile pace, and Dave said there weren't to may girls ahead for me. I ended up 31st overall and 2nd in my age group. So I still placed, even though there is more competition. There is another race in December, so we'll see if I can improve in the next month. I love that my husband supports me so much in my running. He comes to my races, sits around, waits for me, when he sees in the homestretch he starts running next to me and yelling at me to go faster. It's just to cute. You should see how excited he gets when he knows I am doing really well. Thanks Dave for being so incredibly supportive.

Nike Run

Well, I honestly think the Nike run was affected by my being sick a week earlier. I had lots of problems, including a constant runny nose and some stomach pains. Therefore I didn't do as well as I did last year. I finished the 5 miles race in about 41 minutes 35 seconds, where as my time last year was 38 minutes 20 seconds. Oh well. So no personal records set this year.

Saturday was insane as I did the run, came home went to relay for life and ran another 4 miles, then went to my friends bachloerette party. So I am very exhausted today and not doing much.

Nike Run Hit Remix 2006 Success!

So today was the day, and I have to say I'm pretty happy. I did better then I thought I would. Dave and I both participated in the Nike Run Hit Remix today. The weather was warmer than I like. I prefer temps in the 50's and 60's for running. (Race time temp was probably about 70). This was a 5 mile race through LA (near USC). Nike brings out bands every year that perform as you run. This years theme was more of 1990's rap music. They had Young MC, Coolio, Vanilla Ice, and De La Soul performing. Debbie Gibson was also there and sang some older songs as the race started. It was quite amusing to hear some of those old songs again. Anyway there were 10,000 people entered in the race and we all wore the same Nike Dri Fit Shirt. I started the first mile at 7:50 pace, my second mile was oh way to fast at abut 7:10 pace! Overall I averaged about a 7:40 pace for the entire race. Accoriding to my stopwatch my final time was 38:21!!! I'm very happy with this since all I wanted was to be at or under 8 minutes! Go me! Dave also did very well. He did not train at all and managed to average about a 12 minute mile pace. I was happy that he was able to sustain that pace for 5 miles! I'm so proud of him.