CASA Fairfax

Ever since I ran my first marathon I've never really had a desire to run shorter races. I love the challenge of a marathon and the distance and the endurance and the training that goes into it. I love everything about Marathons. The one race I run each year that's not a marathon is the Army Ten Miler (ATM) but it's typically structured around my marathon training plan and therefore I never really race it all out. Since the National Marathon I've been having fun experimenting with these shorter race distances.

The first one was the Parkway 10 miler which I already blogged about. Then, last Friday Doug and I ran a 5k on Friday after work. It was fun. It was Doug's first race and I was so excited for him and proud of him for running the whole thing. We ran together and I chatted away passing the miles, after we went and celebrated with the post race happy hour at Jaleo in Crystal City. The next morning I ran a 10k in Fairfax.

My friend Heather had sent me an email a few weeks before asking if I wanted to run this 10k because it was for a good cause (CASA Fairfax.) I looked at my calendar and said sure, why not. So I signed up. Still excited about my great 10 mile finish I was anxious to see how the 10k would go. Heather encouraged me to run all out so I started the run with her and then went on my way. At first there were a lot of girls in front of me but I just kept to my pace and picked them off one by one. It was a little difficult for me to gauge the course and how far we were because I was not at all familiar with the area and because of the hills I wasn't sure how much to leave in the tank. One by one I passed every girl I saw and suddenly there were no more girls around me to pass. I had about two miles to go so I just kept my head down and kept pushing it out. I crossed the finish line in just over 46 minutes. I paced a 7:27 mile and felt great. I even felt like I could have pushed a little more but I'm still learning about how to run these shorter races. Heather did great too pacing an 8:05 mile. We stayed for the awards and it turned out I placed 4th out of all the girls and 1st in my division. A nice gift certificate to sports authority was my prize. It was really fun to run well and finish fast and I'm looking forward to trying out an even faster pace in the months ahead.