Since I'm liking the races and wanted to see if I could run faster in a shorter race after my last 10K, I decided to sign up for another race organized by New York Road Runner to benefit City Parks Run for The Parks. City Parks organizes many events like Summer Stages in Central Park, which is great year after year.
The distance was 4 miles and during the overcrowded Haiti Run I had a little over 30 minutes and I thought I could do sub-30, so I was aiming and hoping for approximately 29 minutes.
Last week we had a tough speed workout on the track and I put in quite some mileage and during an easy run with my NY running 'Sista', I was feeling pretty tired in the legs and my breathing was off, so I was happy when we had about 800 meters left. However, my sista with all her years of running experience and being an excellent fitness trainer decided to help me realize my new PR goal and took our 'casual' run up a notch; or even 2 notches. All I had to do during those last 800s was staying with her. Well, she picked up the pace and it almost was like an all-out sprint and that for 800 m! I was wheezing and not liking it, but obviously I also like to challenge myself and I'm not a quitter so I gave it all I had left. I said 2 times 'I can't', but the reply was 'yes, you can' - don't even think of stopping.....This finish visualization boot camp paid off, since the next day I ran 28.54 and placed 10th in my age group and logged my fastest pace so far: 7:13. I was soooo happy and in hindsight liked the ass-kicking of the day before much better. In fact, during speed workout yesterday we ran 5x 1200 repeats in faster than 5k race pace and every time I was seeing the 'finish' I tried picking up the pace more, no matter how sore my body felt and I feel mentally and physically stronger, because I learned how and when to pick it up and finish strong.
Some of our rock-star Harriers ran the Boston Marathon this week. They did so well, truly inspirational. The women's team came in 13th and the men's team 14th! Meanwhile during the race I ran, there were more Harriers and the women placed 2nd. By lack of the faster runners I scored for the team as well, which is a nice reminder of my improvement over the past months and I will run my guts off in order to get faster and faster! (so I hope)
