A new age group!

Yum!  post race food as it should be! 

oh yes, that's always fun.  Happy New Age Group to me!  And how did I celebrate this?  We went and ran a race of course!  The Lake Union 10k is a very nice race. Very easy to get to with lots of free parking.  There is a fantastic gender specific technical shirt with a very nice design.  AND post-race food is catered by my favorite (and my mom's favorite) breakfast cafe, The Portage Bay Cafe. I've been there twice recently with her.  Everything is super tasty!  I personally have really stopped having anything post race generally. Dry bagels do not appeal EVER.

I'd really hoped to run well here for a couple reasons.  It would be a good indicator of what to aim for at my goal race in six weeks. I've placed in my age group before in this race and wanted to again. And mentally i just wanted a good race.  It wasn't to be though.

I went out at just a bit faster than goal pace.  Too much?  I don't think so as I've done that successfully in previous years.  There is a pretty good tailwind the first mile always.  Settled into pace for the second mile and then just started feeling crappy and mentally just not there.  By 2.5 miles, i was done and jogged it in.  It was a looooong way to the finish of this 10k (6.2 miles). 

How do you recover from a tough race?

a. Have a pity party and pretend it didn't happen.
b. Analyze (come up with excuses, ahem) as to why it wasn't your day.
c. Stomp about and sulk that you suck.
d. Look for that next race and use what you've learned to move forward.
e. All of the above.

The correct answer is of course, "e."  Who knows why it was such a bad race? I don't run well at this particular event in general.  It's a flat course for here which means there are a couple bridge approaches which is fine. And there is one awful short up which always elicits groans for those not prepared. Even though i am prepared, i groan a little anyway! I had a fantastic tempo up-paced run on tuesday.  I could feel it too this week and was dragging on runs after and keeping it very slow on those runs because i needed to.  I'd messed up inhalers this week too and had run out of my daily inhaler as of last weekend. I was able to get back on dose as of friday but it's one of those things which it is hard to tell.  I could definitely tell i was having more lung issues this week.  

At least the post-race food did NOT disappoint!  French toast with fresh blackberries, blueberries and raspberries.  Whipped cream and whipped butter available too.  I went through the line twice. Hey it's my birthday! There were a lot of friends at this race (and ran into more people i knew randomly) and of course, it was fun overall.  I'd not have done anything different.