Hot Chocolate 15K 2015

This was my third year running this race.  I LOVE this race!  This year when I got sick (first post here), I had already signed up for this race (we signed up in May).  I was worried there was no way I'd be able to do this run.  But I was determined that somehow I'd cross the finish line.  

The first year I did this race, the high was 20 degrees for the day and the race was under a weather advisory.  This year we are unseasonably warm with highs in the 60's (yesterday we hit 70) and today's forecast was all rain.  It's grossly hot in my opinion and unhealthy for animals, but many people are happy that it's this warm.  I was really worried about the rain and watched the forecast non-stop.  I was so worried about getting soaked.  I've been caught in the rain, but never voluntarily started a long run knowing I'd be rained on the whole time.  Needless to say I was stressed. 

Yesterday we went to get our packets.  If you were in the first 15% to sign up, you got special city embroidery on your jackets. 

See the "St Louis 2015 Finisher" below the Hot Chocolate logo?  I thought the StL skyline was nice addition as well.  I love this race - it has one of the best goodie bags that I've ever had. 

We got up bright and early this AM, and it wasn't raining.  Woo hoo!  But the forecast was rain and the radar didn't look good.  I forgot to take a screenshot of the radar before the run - but this was around noon and you can see that basically we are having an all day rain. 

We drove to St Louis for a 7:30 start time and it was dripping by the time we got there.   I started to worry about how exactly I'd get through 9.3 miles with wet shoes/socks.  We walked to the Soldier's Memorial, where the race and post-race set up was.  We immediately used the ports-potty and it was about 7 am.  It was windy, damp and I was chilled.  We headed towards corrals but I wanted to use the bathroom one more time.  It was the whole "I'm cold and need to pee" feeling.  We got in a line and I knew there was no way we'd be able to make it before the start.  So we gave  up and got in our corral.  We were in corral B and I'm not sure why.  There were pacers from 10:30 - 11:30 in our corral, but there were pacers in the 9:xx range in corrals behind us.  I didn't understand that and when those group passed us on the course it really wasn't all that cool.  I felt like I was getting passed by a large crowd. 

The race started on time and it was dripping. I made the dumb decision to put a plastic poncho on while waiting in the corral.  That didn't last the first mile.  I felt like I was in a sauna.  I took it off and trashed it.  I basically got too hot to start and I paid for it.  My face felt like it was fire red through mile 5-6.  My husband ran the 5K and we didn't stick together at the start.  I can't stick with him knowing I have such a long race before me.  But I have to admit that he did amazing and we actually both crossed our respective 5K markers (the course split at mile 2.6) at the exact SAME time.  I thought that was CRAZY.  The time (the actual time of day) was 8:08 that we both crossed our 5K markers.  34:43 was my time.  His was 1 second behind me, I think cause he was a second later across the start.  My husband does NOT run or train at all.  He just does these runs with me for fun and he rocked this 5K.  I was kind of jealous of his time.  I train for this and he practically beat me!

I did really well through the 6 mile and 6.2 mile split.  But then things went down hill.  I walked a few times and then right after I crossed the mile 8 marker we hit a rather long hill.  I think it was about 1/2 mile of hill.  That's why mile 9 was the worse time.  All StL races that I've done end up hill.  Once we got over this hill and headed back near the finish we had a few small hills including up to the final turn to the finish.  It really sucks when you have 0.2 miles to go and are just getting killed by a hill!  I was really proud of my splits through mile 6.  I really need to train on hills more often in order to really improve my time in this race. 

 I beat last year by 52 seconds.  That wasn't as much as I hoped.  But I will say that my only goal was to finish this race!  I always want to beat the time from the previous year, but I was so thankful that I was healthy enough to run this race. 

The chocolate fondue finisher mug is fantastic.  This year it was hard to eat because we couldn't sit on the ground - it was a muddy mess. So holding the mug and eating was a challenge. I should say that the weather held out in the sense that there was never more than a light drizzle.  My shoes only got wet really when I stepped in a puddle or kicked water onto my feet myself.  I'm so thankful for that!

We really had a great time and are already talking about next year.  I asked my hubby if he wants to do the 15K?  Ha!!  Or if he actually trains for the 5k - he'd whoop my butt!!!!

My final finish time was 1:47:06 and a pace of 11:30/mile.  My Garmin was actually pretty close this year.  I tried not to weave like a crazy person through the crowds. 

Here is a close up of my medal and my jacket embroidery:

We continued our tradition of eating breakfast at Cracker Barrel following this race. I always get Eggs in the Basket.  I call them Hole in One Eggs when I make them at home.  I get them with runny yolks and it's so good.  I get turkey sausage cause quite frankly their turkey sausage rocks and their regular sausage does not!

They say that time heals all wounds.  Well it also fades your memories a bit.  I sometimes tend to "forget" just how much pain I was in during that time I was sick.  I tend to forget how painful it was to put my feet on the ground in the morning.  There were mornings I couldn't put my hair in a pony tail.  There were morning I couldn't get my hand to my mouth to take medicine.  I had pain in almost every single joint.  It was horrible and I think about it and try to take myself back to that time every now and again to remember just what it was like.  People are sympathetic to those with chronic pain, but until you experience you really truly cannot imagine what it's like. Even now. . . even when I've experienced this. . . it's faded and I take my health for granted somewhat now.  Whatever I had hit me with no warning.  I know the date, time and exactly what I was doing when it hit.  I have no clue if it can happen again.  Not getting a diagnosis sucks cause I just don't know what happened or if I'll have to go through that again.  I'm so thankful I'm "healthy" right now.  I'm so happy I was able to run this race.  Don't take your health for granted.  And if you are thinking of taking up an activity like running - do it!  Start small.  But just do it!  There are people that wish they could and they can't.  Be thankful for every little step you can take.  Doesn't matter if you walk or run.  Doesn't matter if you move 1 mile or 9.3 :)  Thanks for reading!

Cakeway to the West

On Saturday, my husband and I went cake hunting.  That's what I call it!   There are 250 fiberglass cakes all over the St Louis metro area celebrating the 250th birthday of St Louis.   Well I think as of the last update 234 of them have been placed.   They are at places that are landmarks or some significance to St Louis.   A certain number of the locations were voted on by the public.  Of course I had no clue about that vote until well after it was over and cakes were being placed.  All the cakes have different themes, usually relating to the location they are placed.

We took photos at each cake. Here's one that was the Soldier's Memorial in downtown St Louis that was behind a locked gate.  I guess we got there after it closed.

I took Norman, the World Equestrian Games mascot with us for some photos.   Alltech is kind of asking people to take photos of Norman traveling the world.  Here's one of Norman on the St Louis Art Museum cake.

And here's one of me with a cake so you can get a feel for the size of the cake.  This one was in Forest Park and was at the location of Shakespeare in the Park.  Every spring they do a Shakespeare play for a few weeks in Forest Park.   This was probably one of my favorite cakes.

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So this leads me to talk about wearing my fitbit this weekend.  We walked all over Forest Park to get all the cakes in the park.  It was easier to walk than to hope to find parking near each cake.   I was good with walking cause I was too lazy to run before we left to go cake hunting.   Here are the stats from Saturday. 

Over 7 miles!  Woo hoo.  I'd say that was pretty accurate as we did a lot of walking all day.  It was fun to see these stats and I'm having fun with the fitbit.  

However, the anal part of me wonders how the fitbit comes up with distance related to steps.  Based on the goals, 10,000 steps = 5 miles.  Ok.  When I go on a run and I look at my stats it's pretty dang close on mileage, so I'm good with that.  I do *not* expect this thing to be accurate.  I expect it to be relative. 

So that brings me to Sunday.  Yesterday I ran 3 miles, rode Eli and then did various other things.  Here are the stats for Sunday. 

Relatively speaking I walked less steps and more miles.  This was a little more skewed in the middle of the day yesterday.  There has to be some algorithm that takes in frequency of steps or something.  My guess is that riding might throw this off some, but that just a guess.  I'm not being anal enough about it to look at the stats after every single thing I do, or try to figure it out by doing certain things on certain days.  But when I do the math, Sat come out to 2193.8 steps/mile and Sun is 1952.5 steps/mile.  A difference of 241-ish steps per mile.  *shrug*  Big enough to care?  Probably not.  Definitely not for me.  I'm still having fun with the fitbit and I'm using it in a relative way.   I like wearing it and seeing how active or lazy I'm being.  It's fun on days like Saturday when we were walking so much to have an idea of how much we actually did.  For those reasons I'm keeping it. :)   However, the anal aspect of me is still somewhat bugged by the numbers that I see.  But again I think the thing is close enough and in no way to I think it's accurate to the step, to the mile or to the calorie.  I do not take those calories burned into account in my life.  Well hell, let's be honest, I don't count calories well at all or I wouldn't be this fat right now!

Happy Monday everyone!  Hope this is a great week.  I'm looking forward to a three day weekend after this week is over.  We will probably do more cake hunting and we have tickets to the Cardinals game on Memorial Day.  Yay!

15K Recap

Oh my gosh!  Where do I start?  First of all we had winter weather here in St Louis.  They were predicting a "real feel" of 5 degrees on race day.  So the race officials implemented weather policies which included lowering the avg pace from 15 min/mile to 13 min/mile.  For some reason this really freaked me out.  I think because I knew if I had to walk some, I could still make 15 min/mile.  But I didn't think I could make a 13 min/mile if I had to walk at all.  

On Friday I went to Union Station to get my packet.  It was just raining then, but was predicted to turn to freezing rain any time.  The "fastest packet pickup" only works if the person scans your code.  Mine just wanted to me spell my name.  Which I had to spell three times, as usual.  So much for fastest race pick up!  It was well organized though.   I was surprised at the quality of the hoodie.   Actual embroidery!  I bought myself a beanie and a jacket.  I splurged since this was the biggest and longest race I'd ever ran.   Or at least I hoped I was going to run it, as I also bought my 15K sticker!  

Saturday brought lots of snow.  It was gorgeous.   However I was unable to try my new Garmin on either Friday or Sat.  So that was a bummer.   I'm having some issues/disappointments/frustrations with this watch.  I'll write another post about that this week.  On Saturday evening I started to figure out what I was going to wear, what I was going to pack and generally just getting nervous.  I was in the last 15K corral - E.   I was worried I was going to end up being the last person to finish!  Ahh the things you think about the night before.  All I wanted to do was sleep.  They wanted us at the race at 6:30 AM for a 7:30 AM start.   That meant a 5:00 alarm as we were leaving at 6:00.  That came way too early!   

In the morning it was cold.  Brr!  I was nervous about what to wear just to stand around.   I knew once I started running I'd be fine.  But they had hyped up this cold weather so much. I should have just trusted myself as it wasn't as cold as they predicted, but I still let the thought of the cold get to me.  I decided to wear shorts as a base layer.  Funny huh?  But they are biker shorts so they gave my entire upper leg (and butt!) a base layer.   I didn't want to try to layer two pairs of pants for the first time.   I wore my cold weather under armour tights.  On top I put a tank top as a base layer.  I just wanted my core to warm.  Then my under armour cold weather shirt.  Then a fleece lined jacket on top.  And a full fleece jacket on top of all of that for standing around.  What I didn't manage well was wearing my normal socks. :(  My feet were freezing cold standing around. 

Here I am just after arriving, before finding the porta-potties or the corrals. 

So we managed to find parking downtown and only about a block and a half from the race.  Not too bad.  The streets were kind of a hot mess.  The sidewalks still icy.  The sides of the streets just piles of ice.  Getting to the ports-potties was a "cross the ice at your own risk" kind of thing!  Ha.   There was a TON of them all behind ice.  Basically the plow must have come through after they were set up, so you had that pile of plowed snow all frozen and lumpy.  I managed to cross without breaking an ankle or embarrassing myself.  It's so fun to adjust all your layers inside the small little area.  Ha!  I got hot!  

The corrals were just a mishmash of space really.  They were going to release corrals A-C at 7:30 and then 4 mins later the next wave of D&E I think.  I was in E and the 13 min clock would start after the last person in E went through.  No 15K runners were in any corral after E.   The start was fast and rather anti-climatic.  I wish it had been more fun. 

The first mile was painful.  Literally my toes were frozen by then and I wondered if they would ever return to normal.  Even my hip felt stiff at the start. But on we go!  The crowd was crazy.  I was actually surprised to how fast my first mile was (10:30) cause I try very hard to not start too fast.  And honestly I thought because of the massive crowd it would be even slower cause I was weaving in and out of people.   There was a DJ at some point before mile 2 I think.  It's all a blur.   And there was one water station as well.  At mile 2.8 we split from the 5K runners. It was soooo tempting to get on the 5K side of the road.  The split was very clear and there were big arches over the road for both sides.   It definitely cleared out once we split from the 5K runners.  I felt like I was going fast.  My Garmin indicated it as well.   Since this was my first time running with a Garmin, I set all kind of records.  Including fastest 5K, but I really think this was probably my fastest 5K this year.  I may have been a bit faster at a 5K last year, but it's too hard to know when most of my races aren't chip timed.  Look at that avg pace! Sub-11:00!!!!!  Woo hoo!

So on we go.  Somewhere around mile 4 I see a big screen on the side of a building rotating through information and ads.  I see the temp is 23 degrees.  Perfect!   Around mile 4-4.5 there was another DJ and a chocolate station.  YUM!  They handed me a piece of wrapped chocolate.  No need for one of my chomps!   This was followed by a water/Gatorade station.  I opted for Gatorade.   Just before mile 6 we had to do a U-turn.  That was weird, but it allowed me to see who was behind me and to see I wasn't last! YAY.  There was a chip scanner at the 10K marker it seems, but I haven't seen that data posted anywhere. Of course my Garmin recorded my fastest ever 10K.   Ha!

Things went downhill, or should I say uphill, right after this.  Hello big hill.  We are now in the Soulard area of St Louis.  On Russell to be exact.  I've driven this road many times.  Joanie's Pizza is on this street and when I worked downtown I ate there many times.  Funny how it never seemed to be a hill before.  Whew.  I think I could have walked up it faster, but I kept running.  It sucked and I heard people complain about it once we made it to the top. That was definitely my slowest mile and it took me a bit to recover. Thank goodness I peeled off my jacket at the 6 mile mark!   

From here things are a bit of a blur.  I was just trying to keep running.  I felt my hamstrings and calves get tight somewhere in here.  I think they were cold.   I ate a packet of Gu around mile 7-ish.  And there was another water station in there somwhere.  At mile 8.3 there was a DJ telling us we had one mile left.  He was playing "Shout" and everyone was raising their arms.  I got kind of teary-eyed because I knew I could make it now.  I couldn't believe it was almost over and I had done it!   I was texting my husband at certain mile markers (5, 7, 8, 9) so he knew when to expect me.  Unfortunately some rude people standing in front of him stopped him from seeing me cross the line.   My friend that ran the 5K also missed me crossing as she sent me a text about 15 mins later asking me how far out I was!   

There were photographers on course and I know I was photographed just prior to the finish.  I can't wait to see how horrible I look!   When I stopped running my knee was in quite a bit of agony.  I limped very slowly across the snow and ice to get my finishers mug!   

I scarfed down my snacks so I borrowed photos from a friend.  There was cup of hot chocolate, a banana, an area of melted chocolate to dip items in.  Those items included a marshmallow, pretzels, rice krispy square and a wafer cookie. 

Of course I took the obligatory "I did it!" photo!  I had put on my official race hoodie and the beanie I bought at the Expo. 

My hubby and I checked out the merchandise booth while snacking and he bought me a shirt I was checking out when I picked up my packet.   We connected with my friend that had missed me cross the finish line.  She and I took a photo. She is as short as I am tall.  Wow don't I look like a fat blob in this photo!  Whew.  I will not stand like that again!

By this point I was freezing. I also seem to get very cold after a run, even in warmer weather.  Not as noticeably cold, but still cold.  Standing out in the snow I was freezing and my fingers were turning to ice even in my gloves.  So off we went.  Time for a post race meal!

My husband introduced me to "hole in one" eggs when I first met him.  I'd never heard of them before.  Cracker Barrel calls them Eggs in the Basket.   I love them!  Basically the egg is cooked inside the bread.  I get mine over medium (I think they call it) so I have yummy runny yolk.  YUM!  I was so hungry and still so cold. :)   

It was at this point I decided to check out my Garmin and see what info it would show me.  I was *thrilled* at the pace!!  I really stomped my expected pace.  I wanted my avg pace to be under 12:30.   I rocked it!!!

It matched the "official" time really closely!

I could not be more happy with this result.  And here are my splits from my Garmin:

I was thrilled that only miles over 12:00 were mile 7 (cause the hill was between 6-7) and the mile after it where I was kind of recovering and in la-la land. :)  

And finally, I know some people think this is totally dorky, but I'm proudly sporting this sticker.  I can say that this is probably my proudest moment.  Cause I did this all by myself. There was no trainer involved.  There was no horse as my partner (helping or hindering me).   I did all the training runs myself.  I ran this race alone.  ME!!!!  I never thought I'd be a "runner" and I still don't consider myself one.  But I did  it!  Yes I'm proud of it!!

I ended the night taking an Advil PM.  I hadn't been sleeping very well for about a week anyway.  I was getting more sore as the night went on.  I did take some Advil with breakfast, but that must have been wearing off.   I slept *really* well except when I woke up before midnight crying and screaming with a charley horse in my calf.  Ugh.  I get those randomly anyway, but I'm not surprised that I got one after the race.   I went right back to sleep though.  I took off the next day so I got to sleep in a bit and that was nice!
I know it's cliche to say, but if I can do this anyone can do this.  I did this one year and one day after I had hip surgery!  I'm not skinny.  I'm not a "good" runner.  My body isn't built for running.   I don't "love" it and I argue with myself in my head during every run.  Even this race - I had to convince myself to NOT get off at the 5K split.  Ha ha!   So it's very true.  If there is anyone out there afraid to try a distance like this, you should go for it!  If you haven't run your first mile, it's ok.  You can start slow.  I did.  For this race I followed a training plan and that was difficult to trust.  But I think it was successful.   The next question is: what next?   Maybe a half?  Maybe. . . .  

Here are some photos I yanked from the Hot Chocolate FB page. I thought they were pretty and they showed the city nicely.