My First Race!

Today was my first race, the Saint Patrick's Day 8k in Washington, DC. My friend and I got up at 5 am (yes it was Spring Ahead) and packed everything up. We managed to leave Richmond by 6 am after a quick stop at Dunkin' Doughnuts. I got a plain bagel with butter. The drive took a little over two hours by the time we parked. We headed over to the packet pick up, got our bibs and t-shirts. I was kind of nervous but super excited. We decided to line up in the 11:00-11:59 pace zone, figuring that it was a little slow, but we wouldn't be overwhelmed.

Before the Race

The race course was nice, and pretty flat. The only hard part was all of the hairpin turns. The atmosphere was great, though most of the people cheering were the volunteers. I ended up doing fantastic! According to MapMyRun, my splits were 9:36, 9:13, 9:15, 9:52, and 9:28 (my final sprint to the finish was an 8:57 pace). According to my app my distance was 5.15 miles and I had a 9:31 pace. Officially I had a 9:45 pace and did the 4.97 miles in 48:27. I was happy and very surprised with my times. My friend, who doesn't train like I do, did about 3 minutes better than me. My super competitive self let it get to me and for a while after the race I was upset. Once I remembered how awesome it felt to sprint across the finish line, I felt much better.

I got a granola bar and water after the race and then we got our results. I finished 2,092nd out of 3,668 runners and 1,004 out of 2,165 females. I was also 28/47 in my division (females, 15-19). I'm proud and I think I now have a nice base to work off of and I think that I'm well on my way to a sub-60 6k. I also want to run more races and train right now! My legs are super sore though (we did a lot of sight seeing after) and I'm doing an alternative spring break program this week so it's going to be hard to fit running in. I think tomorrow is going to be a rest day for sure.

After the Race