She's Got Sole!

On Sunday morning, we left the house at the crack of dawn (or very nearly) to head to the lakefront for She's Got Sole. I was meeting up with our friend H for the race, and Dean was going to watch Ella and Sadie, plus H's four-year-old twins, while we ran. Ella has been missing her friends A and C (who used to live upstairs from us), so the kids were all pretty manic with excitement. It was a pretty small race--women only--and getting gear checked and picking up timing chips was pretty easy. Of course, as we were waiting around for the start of the race, the weather over the lake grew very ominous. There was lightning and thunder. And about five minutes before the start time, the skies opened up and it started pouring. Lovely. About a month ago, I ran a 5K in pouring rain, and it was not an experience I wanted to repeat. Plus, Dean had four kids to watch for the next hour or so. The rain was not going to make that task any easier.

But as luck would have it, right around the time we all needed to leave the cover of the beach house and head to the start line, the rain stopped. Dean brought all the kids down to the start, and they cheered for us as we took off. Very cute.

Although this was my 8th race to date, it was only my 2nd 8K. And, actually, my first 8K was also the first race I ever ran (and the first time I had ever run five miles in probably my entire life). I finished that first 8K (the Turkey Trot in November 2007) in one hour, four minutes. So I was hoping to finish She's Got Sole in 54 minutes, thus cutting ten minutes off my previous "best" time.

The beginning of the race was suprisingly crowded, considering how few women there were participating (it was less than 300 total). It took a while for the crowd of runners to thin out. But it was a good crowd with lots of positive energy. Before H and I had even hit the second mile marker, we saw the leaders already headed back to the finish. These women were smoking fast--running five-minute miles, probably--and everyone was cheering them on as they went past.

I can't say that I love the 8K distance. It's short enough that you feel you need to "race" it, but the thought of maintaining a 5K pace for almost 5 miles is a little daunting. I've heard people say similar things about the 10K.

I hadn't been completely sure exactly how long an 8K was. I figured it was just over five miles. As I was running, I was trying to do the math in my head, but it just wasn't happening. Regardless, once I hit the four-mile marker, I KNEW I had the 54 minutes in the bag. The last mile didn't quite feel like a full mile to me, and once I was home I realized that it wasn't a full mile. An 8K is actually LESS than five miles (4.97 miles or so).

I finished in 52 minutes and some change, with the girls at the finish line screaming for me. I love having them at my races!

It's amazing what a difference a few minutes can make. I was totally psyched to have finished two minutes ahead of my goal time. On the other hand, I know I would have been pissed if I'd finished even two minutes after my goal time. (Or a minute after my goal time, as happened in the ten-mile race. I'm STILL pissed about that race!) Usually, checking the race results takes a bit of the fun out of it because then I focus on how many people did *better* than I did. But really, I finished ahead of 93 other women, which seems perfectly respectable given that I haven't even been running seriously for a full year. And I shaved about two minutes per mile from my previous 8K time, which felt great.

As I carried Sadie back to the car after the race, she turned to me and said, "Mommy, I really like coming to your races to cheer for you." Isn't she the sweetest? Although I have to suspect that the presence of A and C and also the proximity of the beach to my race had something to do with her appreciation for this particular event!

Here's a photo of me with the girls right after the race. As you can see, the weather cleared pretty nicely between the start and finish of the race. I have no idea why Ella is making such a sour face. Dean took several pictures, and she's making this face in all of them.