St. Patricks Day Parade Run - 5 Mile

I didn't plan on doing this race, but our friend Melissa was going to do it, so why not. Unfortunately we didn't communicate to well and she ended up paying for non-competitive and I paid for competitive, so we started the race in two completely different groups. Now that I have completed the race, I would have to say that even if your not-competitive and don't care about having your time tracked, pay for the compeitive. There were 1500 or so competitive runners, so we started off pretty quick and there wasn't a lot of walking or traffic dodging. There were about 8000+ people in the non-competitive group, no thanks.

The race was just an out and back, with some gradual hills and a couple turns. I pushed it pretty hard and was at the first mile in under 8 minutes. I think it was about the same for the next mile. In the end I finished the race in 42:03, with a 8:25 pace. My current 5K pace is 8:32, and my current 10K pace is 9:20, so my speed training looks to be helping out.

The race was fun and so was the subsequent parade, but seeing Melissa and meeting her husband Dwayne was the best part of the day.

Time for a Marathon

My initial plans rolling into this year were to do a half marathon in the spring and a full in the fall. Since I really wanted to do the North Face Challenge in October and all the fall marathons are around the same time, I decided to do a full marathon this spring. I really didn't have any interest in doing the GO St. Louis marathon, so after looking around I decided to do the Illinois Marathon, in Champaign/Urbana.

Why not the GO St. Louis? Running in downtown St. Louis sucks! It seems that every race held in downtown is straight down a street and then back. I wanted a race that meandered around a small town and went by houses, instead of empty buildings. I may try it some other time, but not this year.

Why the Illinois Marathon? I lived in Illinois half my life and love the state. I'm a Bulls fan, a Lincoln fan, and an Illinois Higher Education fan. Outside of that I decided on this race because I figured there would be a lot less people there and it is convenient for my dad to come down and join us.

I made this decision eight weeks ago and have three weeks of training left. The training was pretty good up until my first 16 miler. More on that later.

Castlewood Cup 10Mile

Wow, it's been a while since I have put anything up here. I'm just going to throw some quick entries up and get this blog up to date.

The Castlewood Cup was a 10 mile, trail race, held on February 28th. It was about 28 degrees outside, but with the windchill it was closer to 10. Don't be too surprised, my family stayed home. The race started with a cross country style start and a loop through a big open field. Once through the field it was straight uphill on a wide trail that slowly tapered down to a single track. The single track locked you into your place for a while, as it was pretty hard to pass. We worked our way down some switchbacks and proceeded through some flats and then back onto a different trail in the park. The trails weren't too extreme, but the hills were steep enough to cause many of us to walk. At times you were stuck walking even if you wanted to run, less you felt like trailblazing around twenty people in front of you. I was in no rush!

About half way through the trail they had a perfectly placed water/Gatorade stop. I grabbed some Gatorade, since I was carrying my own water (10 miles is too far for me to go without water). The second part of the trail winded its way through the woods and was probably the best portion of the trail. The trail just meandered through the woods, with rarely a major hill, yet still enough elevation change to make things interesting. We worked are way through this second trail and finished up the race on the flats. The most notable portion of the last 1.5 or so miles on the flats was right at the last mile marker. I had read that the race included a water crossing and never gave it a second thought. I figured there would be some rocks, or a tree, or a bridge, or someone to carry me. I was very wrong. The crossing was about 10 feet across and six inches or more deep. I trudged on through and found the cold water to be very comforting initially, but running the last mile with cold, wet feet wore out its welcome.

I finished the race in 1:41:33, with an 11:02 pace. My results are based on a 9.2 mile distance. The 10.1 mile race had some course changes, so they determined that the distance was a bit short in the end. I was pretty happy with the results and look forward to doing it again next year. Big River Running Company did a good job putting things together and the people in attendance were a lot of fun.