Early in the summer Jeremy and I planned out the races we wanted to run. Included in this list were several trail races and a few road races. Sometime during the month of July I realized Lynchburg Road Runners had a competition going called the Road Runners Series. The requirements to compete included running 4 races of the 6 race series. Jeremy and I had just run the 5th race of the series called Percival’s Island 5 Miler. Somehow we managed to run only 3 of the 5 races to this point. This meant participating in the 6th and final race of the series would qualify us for the series. That was all it took for my competitive spirit to say, “let’s sign up!”
Fast forward to last night and various FaceBook friends asking, “racing in the rain?” and other similar questions. (Dun, dun, dun) I love running in the rain yet I have mysteriously avoided racing in the rain, but I brushed off the apprehension, tried brand new foods as pre-race fueling, drank a good amount of water and got a horrendous night’s sleep. You know… good pre-gaming.
We woke up this morning to pouring rain. We looked at each other and knew that if either of us said, “let’s skip it” we would… so we were both silent. I’m not sure if this was unspoken mutual agreement or if our brains had not yet connected to our ability to speak. So we drove to packet pick-up preparing to be soaked.
My first second-guessing moment equipment-wise was over my watch. My watch, my wonderful Forerunner 405cx is an IPX7 water rating, which basically means it works well for a light drizzle, but not so much in the pouring rain. I decided to wear it anyway, but knew that I’d have to rely on the chip timing rather than trust my watch. The second equipment question was my iPod shuffle… let’s just say I don’t really want to get electrocuted so that was out for the day. It’s always exciting to be second-guessing what you do for a race ON race day.
I vetoed carrying my handheld water bottle because… “it’s just a 5K!” I chose to wear my Oatmeal Blerch t-shirt, put my hair up in braided buns and I was good to go.
We waited in the car while the half marathon started, and jogged over to the race start with 7 minutes to spare. I kissed Jeremy and moved closer to the front to begin the race. I knew the bridges would be slippery so I took it really slowly on each of the bridge passes (2 bridges 2x each). (Probably too cautiously). Other than this I mostly ran the pace I was aiming at… between 7:30 and 8:00 min/miles.
Jeremy caught me right before the turn around, but somehow I managed to squeak by him for a 3 second lead.
I finished 7th woman, 7:42 min/mile average, 1st in my AG and 28th overall in a field of 132 people with a total time of 23:52. This is now my road 5K PR, but not my 5K PR (that would be 5 seconds faster…)
It was a great race, I’d just prefer to run it again dry and try to set a new PR.
Now I wait on the results of the Road Runner’s series. 🙂 And on to the next race prep.
Jeremy and Nicole Mink 