More Guts Please!

Last year I ran a nice hilly 8 mile race in Tucson. It takes place on Labor Day, so a perfect weekend to get away while Kids and Hubby have a day off. Ive been itching to go back and do that 8 miler again.

Now, I seemed to forget allot about this race. As I ran yesterday, it all started coming back to me. Hills the whole way. Brutally steep downhills, but mostly uphills. At mile 3.5 there is a huge uphill. When I climb that hill, it is really really difficult, but I keep thinking that Ill get over the top and then get to go down hill. What goes up must come down, right? This is how it goes in Las Sendas where I do my hill training. But after this big hill, there is another hill and another hill and another hill...on and on...you get the picture.

I had a challenging pace goal in mind. I wanted to finish in one hour. I thought finishing in one hour would be so super cool. But as I did the math, I realized that I would not pull it off in an hour. No way. So I decided to make 61 minutes my goal. This seemed properly challenging, but perceivable. Possibly attainable. This would mean having a 7:37:30 avergage.

I went out fast and went into the hill at 3.5 with a 7:25 average. At the top of the big hill my average had slowed to 7:50. I had less than 3 miles to bring it back to speed.

I recently saw the movie about Steve Prefontaine. So I kept thinking about how he said that "most people run a race to see who is the fastest, I run to see who has the most guts." I kept reminding myself to have allot of guts. To go for it. To fight for my goal. To work hard and accept the pain. I was wearing a headband that said "dig deep", and oh how I tried. But I did not have it in me to get my average back to 7:37. I dont know if I dug a little deeper if I had those kind of guts. Im not sure I had 7:37 guts for that course. Toward the end I was feeling a little tingly and wondered if this would be the race where I passed out. Maybe there were more guts in me, because I didnt hit the pavement after I crossed the finish line. Maybe I didnt leave it all out there.

Anyhow, I did beat my watch time from last year. Last year's garmin time was 1:05:48. This year my garmin said 1:03:05. Which was a 7:43 pace. I am happy with achieving my 2nd case scenario goal. And it leaves me thirsting for better. I want to go back and dig deeper.

I did pull a strategy move! Ive been reading books about milers- The Perfect Mile, and Once a Runner. I never used to think of strategy, but these books have put it in my head a little. There was a girl in front of me on the course- most of the race she was way ahead of me. I slowly gained on her, but ran behind her until the final stretch, and then turned on the speed. I didnt know if she was in my age group, but I thought she might be. And I was really hoping for an age group prize. As I passed her I kind of felt like apologizing- this is the part of me that was never good at sports!

It was a fun race and I did win my prize. This year a white wicking cap by New Balance. Yay for prizes! I love the schwag!!!

Southern Arizona Road Racers (SARR) are a fun bunch. You can tell there are allot of neat running locals there. I feel that they have a running community- that allot of these same people do all the races over there. They even have a point system- I think they call it the Grand Prix or something....I enjoyed their race very much.