8K Race Recap + 3 Weeks of Half-Marathon Training DONE!

I am proud to report that even though last week was a bit of a doozy, I still met my goal and ran 5 / 7 days, including a race!

This was my 3rd consecutive year running the Briggs' and Al's Run for Children's Hospital.  The race is an 8K, which is an uncommon race distance.  It is the only 8K I ever race, thus I am always trying to get a PR.  My goal for this year was no different.  I don't know that this was a very realistic goal, given that my speed work has mainly consisted of half-marathon prep (fartlek, tempo, mile repeats), but it was my goal nonetheless.  My best time for this course was 32:12, which I ran in 2014.  Last year I ran a 32:17.  This year, a 32:50.  Womp womp.  It was much hotter this year than other years, and the race had a delayed start - gun went off at 10:45.

Even though I want to run well at this race, logistics are difficult.  I organize a team for the race, including my husband, mom and two kids.  My husband and kids do the walk portion of the event and we meet up at the finish.  The start line and finish line are not at all in the same area, which means we park near the finish and walk a ways to the start (1.3 miles).  Then there are lots of activities going on which my kids want to do every.single.one.right.now.  In a crowd of 15,000 people. Thus, no "proper" warm up.

I felt ok running.  The week of horrible sleep definitely had an impact.  I ended up running a lot of the race on my own.  It was hot so I was dumping water cups on my head.  I also started the race with a dry mouth - never a good sign!  One of my goals for this race was to try to stay positive mentally throughout the whole thing.  I always seem to want to die by mile 4 of the course and this year was no different.  At that point, I stopped for a half-second, exhaled loudly, and continued on.

Because I was by myself, I didn't really know where I was place wise until the end when spectators were telling me I was the 4th woman (not true).  My fastest time, in 2014, was good for 105th overall, 13th woman and 2nd in my age group.  Last year, I was 5 seconds slower than 2014 but 87th overall, 9th woman and 2nd in my age group.  This year, my slowest year by time, I was 58th overall, 5th woman and 1st in my age group.  The 4th woman was almost a minute ahead of me, and the 6th woman was the same amount of time behind me.

My splits for the race were 6:20, 6:44, 6:17, 6:45, 6:41.  Not exactly stellar race strategy, but the job got done.

The race concluded my 3rd week of half marathon training.  Last week consisted of several easy paced runs in addition to a 3 mile tempo run that I ran too fast (again) and the 8K race.  My workouts bump up slightly in mileage this week so I'm hoping for lots of sleep and 5 more check-marks for the week!