Goleta Education Foundation 4 Miler 2013

This lazy bum hasn’t hardly run all week since the Ventura Beach Party Half Marathon. My legs have been pretty tired and my knees have been sore! I wasn’t sure if I was going to run the Goleta Education Foundation 4 Miler with it being so close to the half. I had a good run Friday, so I went to register online and discovered I was a day late! They had the option of registering in person on Saturday in the running store, but I was going to be out of town with a friend. So I printed out the forms, wrote a check and my awesome mom took it up for me and got me squared away.

I ran this race last year and enjoyed it, staying well after the race to enjoy the music and the raffle. This is a Grand Prix event and I am currently holding onto first place and I want to keep it that way, so any extra points would make me happy. Support the schools, get some Grand Prix points and exercise, sounds like a good morning to me.

I was so lazy, I didn’t even want to warm up. I wasn’t racing and I wasn’t aiming for a PR, so I sat in the warm car chatting with Daddio till he said with five minutes to go “if you are going to warm up, you need to do it now.” I jumped out of the car and did a half hearted lap around the neighborhood. This running geek girl was tired!

This just never gets old

We all lined up at the start and the excitement slowly seeped in. I don’t think I’ve ever lined up and not gotten excited! When they said “Go”, I took off with the crowd, getting pulled along at everyone else’s pace. The first half mile was tough! My legs felt like lead! To my surprise, before the first mile was even finished, I felt like I broke through a wall and things were suddenly easier. That happens sometimes, but not enough for me to expect it.

For the rest of the race I was on cruise control, feeling good, thanking volunteers and police officers, striking up conversations with random people in pace with me and just enjoying the race. I celebrated finishing mile three with a complete stranger that just happened to be next to me as we crossed the mile line. I caught a girl that I thought might be in my age group and only let one person get past me in the last two miles. I sped up on the last hill overtaking a few more people and debated with myself about flying down the final downhill to the finish or just taking it easy on my knees. I opted for flying and took off at top speed, soring into the finish line.

Official race finish and overall clock time

I finished with a time of 34:42, not too shabby. About ten minutes later while looking at the official times and seeing that I had placed fourth in my age group, it dawned on me that I’d just PRed! After that, I was giddy and smiling ear to ear. Back to back PRs are epic! Later when analyzing my Garmin data, I realized my heart rate had been in my max zone for the last two miles and I’d somehow done some serious negative splits. You never can tell how a race is going to go!