Raleigh City of Oaks Race Recap

I am back home after a wonderful weekend with Meg in North Carolina, where we ran the Raleigh City of Oaks Half-Marathon on Sunday. Welcome to the race recap!

On Friday afternoon I flew out of SLC and into Raleigh, where Meg was waiting to pick me up. We started things off right with custard (dinner of champions!) and some down time. Saturday was lovely and lazy, starting with brunch at The Irregardless with my friend LW, then packet pick-up, driving the course, doing some shopping, and carb loading at Biaggi's. We were so glad we drove the course. We'd thought the course was fairly flat, but realized right away that we had a lot of rolling hills in our near future.

So happy I got to unexpectedly meet up with L!!

After dinner we organized all our gear for morning, then hung out for a while before turning in. A little after 5am I forced myself to eat part of a bagel, and we were out of her house just before 6. Parking was easy at Cameron Village. We sat in the warm car for a few minutes, not wanting to break into the cold morning. Finally, we forced ourselves to get out of the car and head toward the start line. 

Pre-race

The start area wasn't crowded, but right away I was worried that it would be. The mile pace signs to help people pick a spot to line up at were very close together, and I was worried that it would be a super crowded start area. We'd also noticed on our drive-thru that an early part of the course was a fairly narrow street. Fortunately these concerns turned out to be unrealized, and crowding never was a real problem. The crowd filled in quickly as start time approached, and before we knew it we were off!

We settled in after 2 miles or so and the early miles ticked by. The foliage was gorgeous and the weather was perfect--not as cold as we were afraid it might be. However, those rolling hills were feeling less rolling and more like just plain hills. By mile 6, the hills were staying with me. I was more tired than I wanted to be. This is exactly the scenario where pace bands come in handy. It would have been easy to ease up here and there, assuming we'd recoup the time later. The pace band kept us on target and kept us moving. 

By mile marker 11 I'm pretty sure Meg was rethinking her decision to take up running, and I was busy doing mental math about our pace and trying to distract myself from my decreasing energy. Why the mental math? I was confused about mile markers. I could hear other Garmins beeping about mile splits before my Garmin's beep, and yet, my Garmin chirped about mile marker 12 almost a quarter mile before we passed the physical sign. A quarter mile?? That's too much for Garmin error, especially when mine was chirping later than many on the course. I assumed the physical mile marker was mis-placed. The fifth marker had been way off (I was certain), so I assumed this was too. Fortunately, Meg knew the area pretty well, and figured out quickly that we the physical mile marker must have been closer to right.

I knew she was tired, but Meg dropped the hammer on pace in the last mile. She dropped it so far, and when I knew how tired she was, that only then did I realize that we were in trouble for hitting our goal time of 1:59:59. The Garmin/mile marker discrepancy had thrown us off. We covered our last full mile in 8:31, a full 40 seconds faster than my pace band recommended. With two and a half minutes left before breaking the 2 hour mark, we spotted the finish. Our last 0.3 miles was at a 7:30 pace. Down that straight away, I counted down the blocks, 3, 2, 1, until we crossed the finish. 

Just a step or two over the finish line I reached over and stopped my Garmin: 1:59:37. We'd done it. Six plus years after our first race, we'd finally gone sub-2. 

We got through the medals & pictures finishers' area and made our way toward the post-race party for long enough to grab some water. We strolled around Cameron Village to cool down before heading back to Meg's place to clean up and find some brunch. After brunch and some shopping, it was sadly time to pack up and start the long voyage home. 

Official race results were finally posted this morning, and put us at 1:59:35, placing 36 and 37 out of 186 in our age group, about the top 20%. Mission accomplished, with 25 seconds to spare! 

I enjoyed this weekend so, so much. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated a lazy Saturday and the chance to catch up with Meg. Beating that 2 hour race clock was only icing on the cake. As for the race itself, it was well organized (even the tech shirt is nice!) and held at the perfect time of year. It isn't a flat course though, and if you're game for some just-harsh-of-rolling hills, it's a really pretty course. 

Thank you all for the words of encouragement last week!! I'm taking this week off from running and will hopefully get caught up on reading your race recaps from this past weekend! 

Announcement #1: My next race!!

Those of you I'm linked up with on DailyMile might have already pieced this together, but for everyone else, allow me to spring the cat from the bag:

I signed up for my 8th half-marathon!!

On November 3rd I'll be running the Raleigh City of Oaks Half-Marathon with my BRFF (best running friend forever) Meg. Remember her? This girl. It's going to be epic. 

Raleigh will be our fourth half together, and I couldn't be more excited (in case you couldn't tell). Our goal is simple: break 2 hours. Why? Because that's always been the goal.  

Our first race together was the first 13.1 either of us ever ran. We'd trained with Team in Training and had high hopes. It was Chicago in August. It was hot. Being newbies, we didn't have experience dealing with adverse race conditions, and tried to push through. We turned in a 2:12 and I threw up about 6 times (lovely, right?) (non-graphic recap here).

Our second race was the Indy half in October 2008, when my older son was not quite 5 months old. I think the reason we didn't sub-2 that day is fairly obvious. 

That's me in the blue shirt about to cross the blue mat. Meg is next to me. 

Our third race was the Illinois half in May of 2010, just after we'd both graduated (recap here). That day was about so much more than running--or rather, running was about so much more than running. But, it wasn't our day on the course. We posted a new PR for Meg, but a slower time than we'd hoped for. 

Running in our hoods one Saturday that spring--running together

was about so much more than running

Soon after that race, she moved really really far west and I moved to STL. Then she moved again. Then I had another baby. Meanwhile we both had(have) demanding jobs. Then I moved again. And finally we found an opening to get together for a race. 

So, Raleigh. November. That's the goal: sub-2 our half. We can do this!! We're training "together" from a distance (we're 2000+ miles apart) using the Runner's World 2-hour half training plan, which I've used before and really like. The course is flat and the weather should be favorable. And coming from UT, running at sea level will feel amazing. SO EXCITED!!

730.1 AND DONE

Guess what? I DID IT! Today's 6-miler put me one little tiny tenth of a mile over my yearly goal. After all the confusion and re-planning, I can officially say that this year is in the books. DONE. And as proof of this (and proof that I don't post only the nice pictures), here I am the minute that treadmill stopped. And btw, and you can quote me on this, you know you're a runner mom when you wipe sweat off your brow at 4.3 miles and realize that your hands smell like Play-Doh. 

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for all of your support and encouragement, not just here at the end, but throughout the year. It's been a totally crazy year. I liked the list approach RunningFirst took, so I'll do the same. Here's a good/bad recap of the year in roughly chronological order.

1. I got to run a half-marathon with my much-missed Meg
2. I PhinisheD my PhD! And had a great big party. My West Virginians came and everything. 
3. With the Team, I ran my first trail race the morning of my son's second birthday....and had an emergency appendectomy that night. And an open house the next day. 
4. We sold said house. (well, sort of. It's complicated, but is occupied by people other than us)
5. My parents came to help finish packing, moving, and painting the new place. I drove over our mailbox with a 24' Uhaul truck. We had movers pack the truck, but still needed help at the end. Some of our good friends came to our rescue and helped us get the job done. Then I drove all our worldly belongings to our new house in a new city and state. 
6. The Beastie and her husband came to visit. Saying goodbye was really hard, knowing that they were moving many states away. We'd lived nine of the last eleven years within a few miles of each other. Thank goodness for Skype.  
7. Mr. Joanna and I started new jobs, the kiddo started a new daycare.
8. I endured the hottest long run in history (let's assume no one's ever actually run Badwater). 
9. I tripped and ate massive quantities of asphalt while running...twice. Consequently gave up wearing statement tees, such as one that might have said "Kick Asphalt" that I might have been wearing the second time I fell. 
10. RunningFirst came down to run L&C with me, my second marathon. I set a new PR by 27 minutes, which I'm still pretty proud of. 
11. I got to see some of my college girls, meet some of their other friends, tour San Francisco and run a half-marathon there, including going over the Golden Gate bridge! Not my fastest race, but fun. And I got to run it with Frank (and her "passenger"!).
12. Two trips to Detroit, one for the baptism of my newborn niece and the other for Christmas. 
13. After months of repairs and breakdowns, Mr. Joanna finally got a new car that includes such luxuries as a radio and working windows. Then wrecked mine. (I got glared at for that last part, but it's true. Although it was a minor fender bender and it's been fixed). 
14. I met my running goals for the year and did it injury free!!

I hope I'm not forgetting anything. I probably am. There were so many big moments, not just in our lives but in the lives of our friends.  

In conclusion for 2010, here is the monthly mileage report from runningahead. I'm really grateful that RunningFirst introduced me to this site this year. It's been great for helping me track everything. It's no surprise that June was my lowest mileage month, given the appy and the move. What this graph also tells me is that I clearly need to be doing more tempo and interval work. I also know from my incredible (and historically unprecedented) inflexibility that I have to do more cross-training (read: I need to do some, any cross training).  I'm on it. In the next few days I'm going to start putting together, with help from RunningFirst (aka, Coach Mike) my training plan for spring. Here's to high hopes for my spring races!!