Summer Sunrise Watermelon Race 1:

 

So, The Summer Sunrise Watermelon series is something that I'd been pondering doing for a few years (well at least since 2017 which was I believe the first year they introduced medals as I'm a bling junkie) and so this year with me trying to do a run a month give or take I figured why not. Lets begin by saying that this is a Lakeland Runners club event so like with Mayfair there are more serious runners then casuals plus its location is where March of Dimes normally is and with that many runners I was worried it would be a bottleneck most of the way through....


That said it was a 'cool' 77 degrees when I got to the starting area about a half hour prior to the race and while it was a heat advisory with the PA announcer saying to slow down and hydrate when you can to avoid heat related injuries I didn't want to have to deal with port o lets and so I let my 8oz cup of iced water that I had with my rice cakes and peanut butter for breakfast suffice until I got to the water stop and I was shockingly fine.....


My goal going into 5K #27 was definitely not to beat my 42:46 PR but to at least beat my 49:07 Mayfair time though a sub 45 minute time would be ideal


My Outfit Of The Day was my green Livi Skort, Pink Ideology Tank, Sugar Jolly Rodger Bondi Band and the usual grey New Balance sneakers



I was pleased to find that the start shoot was on the roadway and NOT on the Lakes bike path allowing for runners to spread out which was great as at the beginning of the race I was hitting my stride....once again there was supposed to be a second wave for strollers and families with small children to go off at 7:05 however there was a good amount of younger runners ahead of me on course and the first stroller to pass me as at 7:05 on the dot though as usual didn't interfere with my race...six minutes later when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a race volunteer mounting a bike at one of the side streets we passed I was worried that this race was all seasoned runners and I'd be straggling before even hitting the first marker...this was TOTALLY not the case considering as I was walking back about a quarter mile after the race there were still people on course. It was around seeing those bikers that like I normally do I spotted a few people to mentally watch for pace control one of them being a mother/daughter duo who I continued to weave back and fourth between the rest of the way to the point that the daughter passed me in the finisher shoot and crossed directly before me!

Just shy of mile marker #1 they moved us from the road to the jogging path but by then things had thinned out with all the serious runners long ahead already at or around mile #2....I arrived at marker 1 with my FITbit logging 14:08 and a split of 13'40 for the mile and overall pace of 13'74

In the event E-Blast it said there would be a water stop at 1.50 miles and I arrived there with my FITbit at 1.52 so that was pretty close as I grabbed my drink and thanked the volunteers

At this point I ended up playing the lets kill my pace by taking pictures of critters as I saw this cute little baby bunny




I made it to mile marker 2 with my FITbit logging 29:46 with a split of 15'02 for the mile and overall pace of 14'25....AND then there was another critter corner of some baby ducklings




About nine minutes after the ducklings according to my camera roll there were people from FitNiche's street team cheering runners on but that picture was too blurry to post.


After what seemed like forever due to the humidity and some ankle issues but was pretty consistent with my present pace I got to mile marker 3 with my FITbit logging 45:50 (so much for my hopes of a sub 45 run) with a split of 15'40 and overall pace of 14'51

By the time I finished the race my UNOFFICIAL FITbit stats said that with weaving I logged 3.2 miles in 47:26 and a 14'49 pace with my OFFICIAL time off by a second at 47:25 with a 15'15 pace (only a 26 second pace discrepancy as opposed to the 40ish seconds from prior races)

Anyway the reason this is called the WATERMELON series is that after the race you get a slice of watermelon instead of the traditional banana which while I love my bananas this was a nice refresher




And that's it.... one race down and two more to go....



NEXT UP.....technically my RunDisney Captain Marvel Virtual Short but since those are on my own time and not official I'll give a brief run down at the start of July's Watermelon recap so till then