6.2 + 7 =

Oh my god I'm tired. And I'm SOOOOO sore. But really, it's a good sore.

And I'm really, really happy.

First thing on the books this morning was the Issaquah Salmon Days 10K . Our running this race was designed to be a "test" for Jill, so that she could gauge our fitness level. We were given an "assigned" starting pace and an overall race strategy: keep it in Zone 3/Zone 4 for the first 2-3 miles, then really pick it up for the last 5 kilometers.

Jill's assigned pace for me was 8:20. I knew what I wanted to do with my HR, but I had no idea of if I could do 8:20s, let alone pick it up from there. I hadn't run fast, even on a treadmill, in a long time, save for one run I did with Jason, and I had no idea how 8:20s would feel. So my plan was to go off heart rate - to manage it for the first 5K, then kick it up from there and hold on as long as I could.

It ended up being a good strategy. Of course, I did what Jill told me not to do. I ended up pulling the first mile in 8:00, I pulled back just slightly from there, and basically maintained that pace through the first 3 miles. I hit Mile 3 at 24:23 (according to my watch). Now was the time to kick it into gear. I thought, if I can just negative split this, I'll beat 50:00 (my secret time goal).

For the next 3 miles, I focused on maintaining my heart rate, trying to stay relax, and slowly trying to pick off people in front of me. I reached the 5 mile mark at 39:30, and new that it was time to really fly. I tried to stick close to the people in front of me who were moving, plus I had the added distraction of weaving through the back of the pack of 5K'ers, who we'd now joined up with. With .2 miles to go, I gave it all I had - I was sooo glad to see the finish line!

48:49! Wow!

I have never run so fast in my life! Not only did I beat my secret time goal of 50:00, I beat 49 too! The 7:52 pace got me 4th in my age group, and 39th woman overall (although that was based on gun time, if placing was based on chip time, I would have been 37th woman overall).

The intense effort took alot out of me. But unfortunately our day wasn't over quite yet - as our plan called for a 2 hour run. We'd only done (roughly) one hour. So after a long shower and a (couple of) naps, Jason finally talked me into doing the second half of our run. 7 miles of hills around Phantom Lake.

Ouch.

Needless to say, our pace was significantly slower than our earlier run. We didn't even wear watches, much less heart rate monitors, so it was simple an RPE run. I'm sure we ended up running faster than we'd intended - roughly speaking, we were probably somewhere between 9:30 & 10:00 miles.

And that made for one really tired.... and sore... Char. And Jason.

Darn good thing Monday is a rest day.