Archives for April 26, 2008

2008 Komen Race For The Cure Results

Posted on 4/26/2008 to Health and Fitness

Julie and I ran the Tarrant County Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure this morning. Since we raced the Fort Worth Zoo Run Run last weekend, our plan was to run together, and just see what we could do. That plan was put in doubt Thursday night after I strained my right hip flexor doing intervals. It didn't start hurting until I was doing my cool down, and I was barely able to walk enough to cool down. I was not hopeful, to say the least. However, after ice and rest, it felt good this morning, and I planned to race, pending how it felt after warming up and stretching.

We arrived downtown and had our timing chips by 7:30 AM, leaving about 30 minutes for a good warm up and stretch, and to see how my hip flexor was going to feel. After a light jog, some strides, and then thorough stretching, we were ready to go, my hip flexor included.

We hopped into the competitive 5K starting area, and ran into Julie's former MBA classmate, Ron, and his wife, Tiffany. They were grouped into the 10:00/mile, yet weren't too far back from the start, so we stayed with them. Tiffany recently completed the Cowtown Marathon (I think her first full), and Ron the Cowtown Half, so I was hitting them up for some training tips as we awaited the starting gun.

Once the gun went off, we made our way to the starting line, and then we were off. The first mile was a slight downhill, and we focused on settling into a nice pace--not too fast, because of the killer uphill 3rd mile, but not too slow, as we wanted to take advantage of the slight downhill. Mile one was clocked at 9:04, not bad, but not quite as quick as we could've gone.

With mile 2 we started into the first couple of uphill sections, but they were at least followed by decent downhill sections, so that we could make up some time. We ran mile 2 in 8:54. Not bad at all, and definitely feeling strong. But that was about too change.

Mile 3 was almost all uphill. It wasn't fun, but we charged on. About halfway up the hill, I actually started to feel good--not quite like a second wind, but definitely not as tired as I had been. We finished mile 3 in 9:48, and then the final .1 mile in 54 seconds (at a 7:43/mile pace), with Julie half a step ahead of me.

My Garmin time showed 28:40 and Julie's watch showed 28:41, so we're going to go with 28:40 as our official time. Unfortunately, RunFar, who did the timing, seems to have had problems with our chips, so we're not sure what our official time is.

By the way, the 28:40 is a new PR for Julie, topping her previous mark of 28:48, which was set just one week ago.