Shamrock Shuffle Report

So yesterday was Cubs opening day and so I didn't end up having time to post the Shamrock Shuffle race report, so here we go...kind of long. Plus a lot of other stuff on my mind so probably not so high in the quality department.

On Friday night we had a very enjoyable time with Jake and LaurA! as they came over to our place and we chatted and watched some basketball and heard about their recent trip to Memphis. On Saturday since we kept bumping our run back a day we had 3 miles on the table. We ended up doing this really really slow which was fine since we had the race the next day.

After the run we headed to the expo to get our stuff as well as stuff for a few other Chicago Shufflers that weren't going to be able to make it to the expo. I signed up at the Girls on the Run booth to perhaps volunteer or coach which I think would be great. I fully agree with what their doing and so it might be fun to help out with it.

Pretty low key Saturday night and it was up at 6:30 for the race. We had breakfast, got ready and then headed downtown. We had picked up packets for those crazy jayhawk kids and so stopped first at their condo. At this point I was like, screw this. It's cold, I'm still kind of tired. It's cold. On the walk to find a cab I suggested that we just go back to their condo and watch movies about running but as I still had one more race packet to give to someone I couldn't actually do that.

I went back and forth on what to wear. We did this race in somewhat similar weather 2 years ago and just wore shorts and a light long sleeve shirt and we were freezing. So I said screw that feeling, I'm going to wear long pants and two tops, which in retrospect was way over dressed. We dropped our stuff off at gear check, dropped of the packet with Ryan and then we all headed our separate ways to our different starting corrals. We were in the corrals about 15 minutes before the start and so as usual there was a lot of jumping and running in place trying to keep warm.

8K is such a strange race. You run hard and fast for a long time. You get mile 2 and it's like, oh shit there are still 3 miles to go. So we had a general idea of where we wanted to be. Our PR for this race was 37:39 and so we though if we could do 37:30 we would be really happy....so an average of about 7:30 min/mile.

We hit mile one comfortably 7:26 and so thought if we could just keep that going we would be in perfectly. Mile 2 came by in 7:24. However, my shins were starting to scream at me which happens when I run faster than I'm prepared for. Jason was behind me at this point and I looked back and he just waved me to go on. I don't know what's going on there as I think for some reason the mental game that he's usually really strong with is hanging back on him a little. He mentioned after the race that he just could get to the next mile and was worried instead about how much farther there was to go. That's usually my problem, so anyways, I know he can keep up with me just mentally not happening I guess....he won't have time to write on here so I guess we'll never know.

Mile 3 was a bit slower at 7:31. I realized soon after this that the course was a bit different than the last few years. I started to push it as hard as I could, mainly because I wanted to be done with the race. Mile 4 came by in 7:16.

I was thinking that the finish line was at the same place as the marathon, and while I was climbing up the "mountain" on Roosevelt I thought I would have to turn and still have about 0.2 miles to go. However after the turn I saw that the finish line was just about a block away and so I went as fast as I could which wasn't too fast but the final mile ended up being 7:18. So a final time of 36:57.

I tried taking my time after getting through the chute so I could see Jason finish. I stretched and lollygagged and just when I was just going to head to the gear check I saw Jason finish. He finished in about 38:30 or so, so still a great race day for him.

I really like the runningahead.com website. Good layout for updating race stats (which I love). I know it totally doesn't matter, and yet I love it. I was in about the top 3% for both my gender(2.7%) and my female age group (3.3%) which is awesome. Also hit ~8% for my total finish position. Top 10% gotta love that. I know it's lame, but still fun.

So a great race day. I still don't know if I am going to sign up for a marathon this year. I am going to be defending my thesis (I KNOW I KNOW IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING!!!!) the first week of August and so my thesis will have to be turned in the first week of July. I am going to be so busy with that and a nervous wreck, that I might just need running to be my escape and not my entire life. That being said, I love training for a marathon and I know I'm going to miss it so we'll see. I really want to qualify for Boston and I'm still in pretty good shape, I just don't know if I can devote the time this summer. I could always try and run a race in November I guess.

I'm super busy with work stuff as I have to get done with my paper by today or tomorrow morning. I decided to stay at home today because of some other things happening that I have to attend to. I'm hoping that I can still get stuff done as I find it hard to work at home...although I guess not when I'm really busy.

Alright, so off to work!