The Great New Year's Eve Run

I did my last race of 2007 yesterday in Stow. It was a great course, challenging for me since I haven't done any hill work. I was hoping for a PR but I was 30 seconds over my last time. Considering the last 5K was the Reindeer Run in Lakewood on basically a pretty flat course, I'm pretty happy with my time. I ran more this time and for longer periods which was good. I will say I definitely felt like it was longer than 2.8 miles, lol. The final hill was pretty steep, which for some reason I didn't remember being there.

It came into view and the teenager next to me looked at me and said "ugh." I'm like "oh, shit." So I walked it and pushed myself up the hill. At mile 2 my time was around 32mins. So I thought I could make it. As I came into the gate, I could make out the time clock and was hoping to make it under 43. It read 42:44 and I broke into a crazy (foolish, desperate) sprint running as fast as I could to try to make in time. I was too far out for my sprint and even if I had kept it up, I would still not have made it in time to PR. I looked at my HRM and it read 189 so I slowed down and jogged slowly to the end. Overall, I think I did well. I maintained a avg HR of 173 and the end there was my max at 189.

I had two cheerleaders at the end, my mom and fellow CTCer Brandon, so that helped. Initially, I was disappointed and I remember thinking on the big hill that I hadn't run enough this month. After I had an apple I started to feel a bit better about it all and I woke up this morning feeling my calves and knew I had worked hard and I was pretty satisfied as I stretched in bed this morning.

There were quite a few CTCers there; Brandon and Craig did well with their times. We stayed for most of the awards and then I drove the route so my mom could see the hill. She wanted to see how steep it really was. :)

Overall it was a good time and next year will be even better!