4th of July 10K

I celebrated America's birthday in a pretty traditional fashion. I started out by running a small 10K near my hometown, 327 people small, to be exact. FYI, this picture was taken after the race, hence the nasty sweat and hairhorns.

Just so you know, there is no greater form of patriotism than wearing a red, white, and blue noodle hugger and red Aspaeris Pivot shorts. Not to mention the race shirt from our nation's capital. 

I've only ever run two 10Ks, one was over 2 years ago, when I was just getting into running, and I know due to this blog that my time was 53:06. The other one is called "Dreaded Druid Hills", which was fun, but not the kind of race to PR in, so 53:06 was the time to beat.

I really didn't know what to expect. On one hand, I know I've gotten faster in the past two years, so I figured beating my PR was pretty much a given if I put in minimal effort. On the other, I've done no recent speedwork. In fact, all my runs in the heat and humidity have been slow and pathetic. 

I started out feeling pretty good, and when I passed the guy calling off the times for the first mile, mine was 7:40. So once again, I was headed down that dreaded path of starting out too fast. 

My splits from this race are basically a study in "how NOT to run a smart race". 

7:36, 8:11, 8:09, 9:13 (WTF happened here?), 8:33, 8:20, and my last .2 was at a 7:44 pace. So apparently my plan was: take off like a bat out of hell, then slow way the hell down and barely trudge to the finish. Perhaps doing some tempo runs to work on pacing would benefit me.

I was totally pissed off when I saw the finish line clock had "51" on it, I was hoping to finish in under 1:50, especially since a guy was calling off the 5K split times and mine was 24:25. My official time was 51:31, average pace 8:19. I stormed off to the car, planning on rushing home to forget about how poorly I did. 

Kara asked me if I won anything in my age group, and I said I didn't even check, but then it started to bother me, so I actually drove back to the race start (I hadn't gone that far), and checked the results. I was third in my age group, so I stuck around for the super fancy awards ceremony.

It was run mainly by young children.

This pretty much took forever. You would think people winning an award for running a race quickly wouldn't take so long to saunter up and get their freaking award, but they did. I did get to see a man in the 70 and over category who ran the race in 54 minutes, which I found pretty impressive.

There were 18 women in this category, so totally legit.

When I got home, my mom was cooking, and I got my real reward.
 

I think I am addicted to bacon.

I'd like to call myself a bacapescatarian - a "vegetarian" who eats fish and bacon.

Then I flew back to Baltimore, and did the typical holiday activities - ate, drank, and watched fireworks with friends. When we left to head home, it was midnight and still over 90 degrees out. So Kari's suggestion of running at midnight to deal with the heat is invalid.

A lot of blogs have asked people what they did for the 4th, but I think I'll just assume we all did the same things as the rest of America, and ask a totally random question - what would you do if the love of your life was allergic to chocolate, and being with that person meant giving it up forever.