Race Report: St. Patty's Day 8K

Kyle was selected to present his research at a conference in Baltimore, so we decided to add on a little vacation in DC to visit friends and our old stomping grounds. As luck would have it, it happened to be the weekend of the St. Patty's Day 8K, so Kyle, our friend Kelly M, and I all decided to run it.

Pre-race: Kyle and I had some espresso and shared a little breakfast sandwich at Starbucks in Dupont and then jumped on the Metro to downtown. The race had more than 5,000 runners so most of the people on the Metro were runners, too. It was fun to see that everyone was geared up for the same thing on a cold Sunday morning.

Since this race was just for fun and I hadn't been training for the distance at all, I decided to take the opportunity to do something I've always wanted to do but never been willing to take the risk -- I decided I'd just go out hard for the first half, as hard as I felt like I could, and then if I wanted to quit and walk the rest of the way at that point, I'd let myself. Usually I have training invested in a race, so I wouldn't risk a total blow up like that. So that was my goal, see how long I could last at a fast pace, which to me meant about 7:20 pace. I thought I'd do the first few miles around 7:20-7:30 and then the last couple around 8s or so.

Race: Since I was planning this blow up strategy, I parted ways with Kyle and Kelly M just before the start and got up close to the front with some speedy people. The race was a bit delayed, but finally the gun went off and away we went. I got into what I thought was a slightly beyond comfortable fast pace, assuming it was right around 7:20. At the first mile marker, checked my watch -- 6:59. Crap. (I gave up swearing for Lent, so "crap" is a pretty serious word). I knew that 6:59 was definitely going to screw me up, even though I was planning to go out fast, I didn't think I could go that fast and I was sure I couldn not keep that up for 2.5 miles. Sure enough, major slow down, mile 2: 7:21.

At that point I figured I'd just try to get through the next half mile or so to the halfway point and then slow to a jog for the remainder. I came through mile 3 much slower: 7:44. Now with just two miles left, I figured I'd just keep plodding along but that when I could see where Kyle and Kelly M were, I'd give them the signal that I was going to slow down and wait for them to catch up to me. (The course had several turnarounds, so you could see people frequently and I had already seen them twice). I had already planned that I would run my finger across my throat and they would understand that meant it was over for me. Of course though, I kept on running and running and didn't see them! Mile 4: 7:38.

Well, at that point, I decided to just finish it off because coming in under 37:30 was still within reach. I think all of these pictures are from the last half mile where I was just trying to tough it out. Managed to finish in 37:02 (last mile: 7:17), good enough for 71st woman, ahead of 2,303 other women. I can confidently say, however, that it would have been much easier to run 5 miles evenly at 7:27 pace than do the fun little experiment I did going out in 6:59.

Post-race: After finishing, I jogged out to the course and watched for Kyle and Kelly M to finish. They both expected to run around 9s and surprised themselves with faster times! Huge props to Kyle who had barely run at all in the months preceding. We all agreed it was a great race and patted ourselves on the backs for getting out there, then headed out for bloody marys and brunch.

Me 37:02 (7:27 pace: 6:59, 7:21, 7:44, 7:38, 7:17)
Kelly M 39:58 (8:03 pace)
Kyle 41:31 (8:21 pace)