St. Patrick's Day Wknd.

After a long and rough week at work I finally had some days off, and what did I do. I had a race paid for on St. Patrick's Day morning. I managed to get a pasta dinner with tuna the night before, so I feel that the carbs gave me a boost. I woke up about an hour and change before the start of the race. I hit start on the coffee and made some toast with PB. I took my Zyrtec, Advil, and 5 Hour Energy and headed on my way. In my race bag I had my headphones, watch, Gatorade G Series 1, 2 &3, Ironman gel, and warm ups.

Since it was St. Patty's Day I made sure my run gear matched the theme of the day. I wore my lime green UA shoes, black shorts, a green "I Need A Drink" tee with Snoopy on it, and a green felt top hat with bow. I thought it was photo worthy.

I left a little later then I wanted to but, I still manage to leave at a decent time. I knew 59 would be pretty clear and it was. I arrived at the Jefferson Ave secret entrance to the Riverwalk, at 7:45, which was perfect. I had my warm ups on and ran to the registration tent to grab my bib number(#49), free t-shirt and bag of advertisements for other races and causes. and ran back to the car. I managed to get back to the car at 7:53, which gave me plenty of time to take the G2 Prime, and take off warm ups and slowly jog back to the start line. I made it with a few minutes to spare. I got a nice spot up front and bounce around til the mayor got on the loudspeaker.

When the gun sounded, I took off. managed to goof on my watch and couldn't get it to start. While looking at my watch I got pushed by a couple of guys, no biggie. The start of the race was really fast, somehow i managed to stay with the front pack. I ran the first mile so aggressively that I missed the first mile marker. My Achilles felt fine and I kept pushing, it wasn't until about the middle of the second mile that I felt my body finally realized what I had done to it. I started to get passed by people rather then me passing others. I still felt like I was going at a solid pace my 2 Mile time was 12:13, so I know I was flying. I hadn't broken a 7 minute mile yet in any of my runs, so running 2 6:07 miles was unreal. The last mile was rough but a clear head got me through the downtown portion of the run. I got a few good deep breaths in and felt my legs come back which really helped me accelerate to the finish, I remember seeing the 3 mile time and thinking I have a chance to break 20 minutes. I hadn't felt that push in my legs in a long time. I ended up running a PR of 19:58.

I grabbed 2 glasses of water and 2 bananas and wandered back to the car. Once I caught my breathe I took a walk along the Riverwalk back to the race tent where there was a big party. A couple paramedics were taking care of the dehydrated and fatigued runners. There were about 3-4 ambulances and 2 fire trucks. I then took some pictures and headed to McDonald's for my post race reward of a Shamrock Shake.

The rest of the day, I went on a walk with Vanessa, had some Panera, and watched a lot of college basketball. My body started to shut down around 7pm. I was so tired from the week from working 56 hours, which was nuts. I didn't wake up til 11:00am. The shut eye felt great. I woke up a little stiff, after I walked around a bit i had to sit down. I watched some of the tourney and then decided to go for a nice slow run to loosen up my body. It helped some. My right calf is still somewhat tight but since I went to Road Runner Sports on 75th, I bought myself The Stick with Bobby's Christmas gift card. I've wanted one for so long, and it will help the stiffness go away.

Overall a good weekend, I'm looking at the Blackberry Farms 5K in 2 weeks on March 31st, as my next run. Happy Running everyone!