We had a grand ol’

We had a grand ol’ time at Run The Woodlands this morning. It was the self-proclaimed “Bloggers Edition” and almost everyone made it out: Jon and Waverly, Cassie and Manny, Jessica, Jen, Edwin, Joe, and Keith. Even Steve and Holden came out to volunteer and cheer while saving their legs for the 30K tomorrow. (The links to their blogs are all in the sidebar — I’m too lazy to do it again here!) Add Gavin and Mike (Gavin’s dad) to that list and I knew almost half of the runners in attendance. Not bad for my first appearance at the race. 🙂
I’ve always liked the idea behind Run the Woodlands and like it more after having run one — it’s a 5K held on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of each month. There’s no formal registration, no t-shirts, no prizes, and no hype. Just put $1 in the bucket (which covers Gatorade, timing, and the little stuff) and off you go. There were 35 finishers this morning, I think. As for me, well, I had a great race, my best in a long while.
It wasn’t quite as cold as I’d expected, so the temperature was my version of ideal — hovering around 50 degrees at the start. The race begins at an elementary school and starts with two laps around the parking lot before heading out for a large loop around the neighborhood. My initial plan had been to keep Cassie and Manny in my sights, figuring they’d run something like 30:00. I quickly discovered two problems with this plan. First, the path was curvy enough and the trees were thick enough that I couldn’t consistently keep tabs on people more than a hundred feet or so ahead of me. Second, Cassie and Manny were flying!
As they pulled farther and farther away, I decided to focus on a girl in front of me wearing a knit hat and going about my pace. I followed her until somewhere around 1.25 miles where she suddenly paused, not sure which way to go. She looked at me, and I laughed, saying “I don’t know which way to go either!” She laughed as well — she’d been counting on me to tell her if she went off course, I’d been counting on her to lead me in the right direction. We decided to go straight, which was the most obvious choice and ended up being the right one.
Now that we were side by side, we starting chatting. Her name was Alexa and she’s only been running for 3 months so far — today’s 5K was her first race ever. I thought that was pretty cool, so we talked a lot about running and why we each started doing it, and what we liked about it. I told her about training for the marathon and she said something like “wow, I can’t imagine ever doing that.” I replied with “yeah, that’s what I thought when I first started running too — you’d be surprised what you eventually start thinking of doing!” I really enjoyed running with her. She’d never run more than about 2 miles before, so having me there helped keep her going. And she was slightly faster than me, so having her there kept me going. We stayed together for the rest of the race until she pulled slightly ahead of me at the end to finish strong in front of her family (who were all there waiting for her). I felt good the whole way, breathing hard but not hard enough that talking was impossible. I could have picked up the pace a bit, but was having fun with Alexa.
Next thing I knew, we were turning back into the school parking lot and about to hit the finish. I glanced at my watch and was surprised. My final time? 31:21! That’s a 10:07/mile average! (My best average pace in months, over any distance.) I was really excited, and felt even better when I overheard Jon comment to someone that “wow, that’s a great finish for Sarah!” Better yet is the knowledge that I still had something left — I felt good enough and strong enough at the end that I know I could have finished even faster.
After the race, Jon invited all of the HRBers to his house for breakfast and we got to all hang out and talk. It was a lot of fun (thanks for having us Jon!), and I got to hear about everyone else’s run this morning. A lot of us had good days — Edwin, Jessica, Jon and Waverly all set PRs I think. Cassie had her best 5K since her ITB injury, and beat Jon by a second (it was the orange shirt, Jon)! Jen had a nice run to stretch her legs before doing the 30K tomorrow. Keith tacked the 5K onto the end of an 11-mile run to get in his distance for the day. Gavin ran an great 21:30 (though he didn’t come to breakfast).
I loved the race and loved the course. If The Woodlands were only a little closer to Clear Lake I’d run this race as often as possible!