Pretty blossoms everywhere!
We headed up to Winchester last Friday to check out their Apple Blossom Festival, also known as "The Bloom". After I ran my Thanksgiving 5K I decided I wanted to try to run a longer race and set a goal for 2015 to run a 10K. After looking up various races I chose the 10K associated with The Bloom. I figured we might as well kill 2 birds with one stone, get my run finished and check out a new festival. I am always up for a good festival. Winchester is about 2 hours from Charlottesville so we left Friday night and stayed in a hotel. Jared and Lydia were of course thrilled to stay in a hotel. This stay was actually better then our previous hotel experience which was nice. After my race Saturday we headed back so I could get ready for the day and Mark took Jared and Lydia swimming. Much to Mark's surprise the pool was not attached to the hotel. It was actually an Olympic size swimming pool across the street at the Rec center. Jared and Lydia were really happy to go swimming. I think the race was not super exciting for them.
In all honesty it was not that exciting for me either which was disappointing. After talking with several friends who have run long races I expected to get that runners high and get lots of adrenaline from the crowds but it just didn't happen for me. It was just a long time to run so honestly I was kind of bored. I had made a goal to run the whole race and am happy that I was able to do it. A 10K is 6.2 miles and I stayed right around a 10 minute mile which is slower than what I ran while training in our neighborhood but I was fine with it. My main goal was to run it all and I did. I remember running past the 5K sign and feeling good and then feeling really excited when I got to the 5 mile sign thinking I had just one mile left only to be disappointed a little while later when I saw the last mile sign. That pesky .2 miles! The course was a good one in the sense that it was pretty level I am not a huge fan of inclines but it was sort of boring too as you would run down one side of the street and then run up the other side. I much prefer running a loop without a lot of overlap. I was running along when all of a sudden I heard the announcer say that the first runner was coming up to the finish. I looked at my iPod timer and it said 27 minutes! This guy ran the 10K in less than 30 minutes. It was amazing to see him run by. It was fun to run by Jared, Lydia and Mark and have them cheer for me. The course went down some very pretty streets and the blossoms were in full bloom so they were fun to see and to run though all the petals. Even though I was bored while running I felt really good when I crossed the finish line. I didn't feel exhausted or sore at all which made me feel good. I felt like I could have rumor if I needed to which was nice. Overall it was a really good experience and I am really happy I did it and am proud of myself.
Lydia wanted to stretch too.
Mark is always reminding me that I need to stretch after I run.
I finished in 1 hour 2 minutes!
I put some picture of the race on Facebook and a friend asked me if I had to train for it or if I was able to just go run it. I could never just get up and run 6 miles! My good friend Megan really enjoys running long distance races. Back in January I mentioned to her that I set this goal and she kindly set up a training program for me. From what I had researched online 8 weeks was the recommend time amount to train for a 10K so that was what she set up for me. It snowed quite a bit here in February so I was glad I din't have to start seriously training until March. I have always known that I prefer running in colder temperatures but I think my ideal temperature is around 45 F. That was another issue with this race. The day was a perfect Spring day, 72 F making it around 65 for the race which is quite a bit hotter than I would run in while training. I typically ran around 6:30 AM when it was nice and cool not at 8:30. If I were to do this again and I might, I would try to choose a race in like April and hope I could run enough in February to train. If the race was mid April it could work out. The training program never had me run more than 4 miles so I was really unsure of where those last 2 miles would come from on race day. The Saturday before my race I was set to run my 4 miles and when I got back to the entrance to our subdivision I decided to keep going and see how I felt. I ended up running 5.5 miles and felt awesome. I would say I enjoyed that training day more than the race day. I did that in 54 minutes which was a pretty decent time.
Besides the race which was the main point of going we stuck around Winchester to watch their parade for the festival. It was a huge parade! There were really fun floats, lots of "royalty" and marching bands. It was amazing all the people who were there to watch it. This Festival is a pretty big deal in Winchester. The number I heard for race participants was 1400! Lots of people decorate their houses in pink and green for the festival which I would totally be on board for. It is a fun event.
Just happened to pass Stonewall Jackson's headquarters on our walk to the parade, kind of a big deal in the Civil War.
No comments:
Post a Comment