Track times two (the recap)

WORKOUT – Ran

outside on a nearby track

7.0 miles/61 mins

easy, post-race, BORING miles

There’s a nice local track right down the street from our rented house in Eugene so I decided to run this morning and see if track running is really as boring as it sounds.  By golly, Holmes, it is.  Reminds me why I don’t do track workouts.

EUGENE MARATHON RECAP

Eugene wasn’t even on my radar until a couple weeks ago.  I ran the race last year with my brother and was focused on Man Up Week, but then a place opened up in the house and suddenly I was registered.

The original plan was to go for a PR if my legs felt like it, but then Margot asked me if I would pace her.  I run almost all my runs alone and I’m very selfish in my running so anytime I can run with someone else and get the focus off of myself, I feel like it’s a good thing.

So I said sure thing.  I don’t think I had any superfast running in my legs anyways and there’s always another race for that.

We got up early and left the house around 6am all ready to run some big PR’s.

Emily, Sarah, Margot and I

I’m not going to write a race review since I wrote one last year, but this is a great race: it was PERFECT running weather, it’s small enough to not be a logistical nightmare but big enough to be exciting and fun, and it’s an interesting, scenic course and it’s fast.

I had a couple cups of coffee at home and then had my standard pre-race breakfast 30 minutes before the start.

The race started right on time and we were all off in a cloud of compression, Nuun and excitement.

The Margot Plan was to start around 7:50-8 min/miles and later readjust goals if necessary.

We started out with what I thought was perfect pacing: the first couple miles were all around 7:50ish.  My first concern was starting out too fast and we didn’t. 

I was trying the whole race to get a read on Margot and how she was doing, and I’m not really sure how well I did that, but I tried.  We didn’t talk a whole lot but just kept ticking off the miles right on pace.

Margot’s boyfriend Anthony took a few pictures of us at a couple different points.  Thanks Anthony for the pictures!

I’m giving the Jersey Shore fist pump while Margot’s all business.

We hit the halfway mark right at 1:43 and in the next couple miles started slowing down a little but still keeping at it.  Although she never said, I think Margot was doing as much mental battle as physical, and she never gave up which was huge.

We passed the football stadium around mile 15.  I love this course – you run on wooded trails, by the river, through parks, it changes enough to keep you interested the whole time.  Some parts are run on narrow bike paths and I can see how it could bottleneck and get crowded, although we didn’t experience either.

Pretty, no?

For the first half I obsessively checked my Garmin to make sure we were on pace and not too fast, but I checked it less in the second half.  I don’t have any splits off the top of my head either; you’re welcome for the awesome.

I was really proud of Margot for not giving up on herself or the race.  She came into it with a ton of tough miles on her legs and she gave it what she had on that day and that’s all I asked of her.

We finished on Hayward Field track and Margot sprinted her little heart out:

Thanks Steffanie for the picture – check out Margot’s killer stride.

Margot finished in 3:32:40, the 98th woman and a 3 minute PR! 

I finished a second behind her.

I haven’t paced a whole lot of people and actually don’t have a great track record as far as meeting pacing goals (oops), and I do feel a small sense of failure on my part for not getting Margot to the finish a little faster.  It may not be logical, but I think, What could I have done better to get the best results out of her?

But then again, she pushed it as hard as she could to the finish – girl was spent at the end.

Afterwards I was able to meet a few readers: with Jessica here.  I also met Steffanie and Meghan who scared me in a banana costume.  Not kidding, she scared me.

And meeting readers Maria and Kayla.  Thank you all for saying hi, I always appreciate when readers take the time to meet me and say hello.

The three big PR ladies: Sarah, Margot and Emily.

It was great just to have the opportunity to hang out with them and be part of such a fun weekend.  It’s really inspiring to see people like these girls who work hard, gut it out and set personal records. 

I’m really proud of all of them.  awhhhhh.

Tagged as: blogging friends, race recap