10k in Mission Bay

I was recovering from my race in San Diego on Wednesday with my feet propped up, which is rare when Hunter is awake. The TV in the hotel room was on and Jeremy noticed a commercial for a race at the Mission Bay park right down the street and said, hey you should do that--we will still be here!

I ran a few miles on Thursday to make sure my legs still worked after no training for four days. They did, but in slow motion. Good enough. We headed down to the park early Saturday morning and paid an extraordinary amount for a 10k, all in the name of children.

How simple it is to just run after the whole triathlon-with-two-transitions event. Armed with the garmin this time, I ran about two miles as a warm up, with a few strides, nursed a baby, then lined up with a couple hundred others.

The race was the usual kind of race for me for the first mile. I started out easy, but ran my fastest mile anyway. I passed tons of people just before the mile mark, including all the women in front of me. Most people just go out waaay too fast and don't run the tangents! I even told one guy that he was running extra around all the sweeping curves, but I think his music was too loud. Dropped him and his traffic cone shorts around the next curve.

I learned around mile 2, which was already slower than the first, that we had a nice tailwind for the beginning, and coming around the back side of Fiesta Island we were in for a nice strong gusty couple of miles. A large man tried to draft off me, and the race was small enough that once I dropped him and passed a few others, I was in no man's land, with my mind wandering to breakfast plans. This island is basically a pile of dirt with a few flowers-- no trees, nothing to block wind. It was grinding.

I made it to the turn out of the headwind around mile 4-ish, having only run one mile over 6-something, right at 7:00, thankfully, and I caught a hard breather who was not ready to let me drop him. He matched me stride for stride through an out-and-back, but I was picking the pace back up and he didn't hang for the final stretch.

I haven't done a 10k in so long I wasn't sure what to expect, but was happy with my unevenly paced 41:22 and a victory. No cooldowns for me other than walking to a tree to plop down and nurse Hunter. Jeremy said just after the gun started us, Hunter started signing milk.

Before we hopped on the plane that afternoon I got a post race treat: an In and Out burger. There we saw tutu-clad, pink- and blue-skinned girls fresh from a color run, I'm guessing. I wonder if they had as much fun at their race as I did? :)

 Someone needs to work on her awful arm crossover!