My SECOND official race! This one was conveniently located right outside my house at Green Lake. Not gonna lie...this was phenomenal. I was able to wake up early, enjoy the morning without racing around getting ready and then just walk down to the course. Green Lake was SWAMPED! Almost 1500 people in just the 5k....and another 500 or so in the 10k. PLUS there were mother daughter teams signed up.....it was Ridiculous....seriously....ridiculous.
I knew going into this that the course would be swamped. I mean, Green Lake on an average day can be hard to maneuver with strollers, bikers, casual walkers, kids playing around etc. Cram 2000 people on the course and its gonna get sticky. Especially when you put everyone on the outer path which is WAY smaller than the inner path. So given all this I knew that this wasn't going to be a course that I could set any kind of PR on. I was just trying to improve upon the last race. That meant RUNNING the WHOLE. FREAKING. THING! (my first race still bums me out to this day....) And then learning from the mistakes I made. Not jumping into the middle group where I'd be forced to up my pace to get around the walkers...etc....
Well this race I did just that. I waited for everyone to go before I started thinking I'd have some clear room...WRONG. Because the course was much smaller of a path, waiting till the end actually on made it WORSE to dodge people. I spent 90% of the race weaving in and out of the groups of people there. Even after I got out of the huge groups you'd have smaller groups just walking or running 5 people wide. Now I know that some of these people are doing it more for just fun and having conversation while they run or whatever....but on such a tight course it was SLIGHTLY annoying.
Not to mention it was a VERY warm day again. Lucky me. Race day seems to have been the time for Seattle to be gorgeous.
BUT I finished the race without walking and made it in about the same time I did my first race. Still at about 30 minutes with a 9:40/mile pace. No PR, but close! Ranking wise I did pretty well too! I ranked 40th out of 210 in my division (age range 25-29), and 40th out of the 1432 5k participants. That means I was in the top 20% of racers my age and in the top 3% of all 5k participants. Not too shabby right??? For my second race I think NOT! I'm pretty sure though that most people participating were more in it for fun than the actual idea of racing or setting great times. So I take the results with a grain of salt....but then I think I'm PRETTY DAMN AWESOME :)
Sorry...ego boost that I had to give myself right there. :)
Check out the race results and my Athlinks profile at the links below!
Athleta Iron Girl 5k Race Results
http://www.onlineraceresults.com/race/view_race.php#racetop
My Athlinks Account
http://www.athlinks.com/racer.aspx?rid=101108156
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