Monday, March 16, 2009

St. Patrick's Day Dash

Despite the cold wet weather we all had a great time at our 1st St. Patrick's Day Dash. The 3 kids did great in their race, especially Nicolette. She exceeded what I thought she could do, but I'll let Jenn blog about that for reasons you already know.

As the dollar sized snow flakes fell, I stood undercover waiting as long as I could before stripping off my pants and jacket. Finally with about 5 minutes before the gun I said my goodbyes and headed for the green wave corral. It's funny, there are thousands of runners there I end up standing next to fellow maniac Michael Shiach (he finished in 29:01). I tried to stay warm and loose until the gun went off but it was just too cold.

At the start it was a 300 yard Mad Dash for the first turn through the snowy puddle ridden streets. My feet were already half frozen so at this point, they could only get warmer. I tried to take it easy for the first mile so I could loosen and heat up my legs. After a half a mile I was warmed up and started to pass people. It's uphill from about a third of a mile to the 2 mile mark then it's a tenth of a mile to the turnaround. I held it pretty steady at about a 7:00 m/m up the hill. It was steeper than I had expected but I figured I could make it up on the way back down.

At the turn around I felt good so I pushed it to about a 6:00 m/m and held it there to the finish. I finished in 24:43 which is a 6:36 pace if the course distance is correct. I suspect it might be a little long.

Since I didn't wear any green I had Jenn paint a Brooks Logo on my cheek.






Here are the unofficial results. The timing company is still cleaning up the mistakes.

Division place: 14 out of 379,
Gender place: 94 out of 3423,
Overall place: 111 out of 7247,
Time: 24:43,
Pace: 6:36


After the race we went straight home to warm up and dry out. The sun came out so I went for a nice 6.5 cool down.



Next up Chuckanut 50k.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Obviously it's not a 5k! Nice time.

Jenn said...

It was a fun day, even though it was snowing!