A Decade of Promises

  

17.35 miles in the span of two weekends… check… while it’s not as many miles as I ran in the three consecutive days of Springtime Surprise last year it’s still a lot, especially as I didn’t bake in any buffer days for recovery so in the week between ‘racing’ I’ve been on my feet working a 23 hour week. (no complaints though as I need the money to feed my expensive hobby)

Promise Run is one of the few events I’m perfect in and I love running it each year both due to the cause and because unlike most of the other local events I participate in it is NOT put on by the local runners club and so I don’t mentally feel like I’m not good enough for not being able to run a sub 11 minute mile.

 

I decided to “Touch The Sky” and Channel my inner Merida with todays look. This included a Tek Gear flow tank, my long glitter leggings from Old Navy and my Changed Fate Princess Headband from Crowned.

My Goal going in was ultimately under an hour but ideally between the 50-55 min range at most.

I arrived at the starting area at 8:12 ish and just kind of lingered in the shoot. There is no formal seeding as like I said it’s not run by the local runners club and so I kept towards the middle like I normally do for this race.

The weather was about ten degrees cooler then last year with it being 66 feels like 68 however the humidity being higher at 93% balanced things out.

Like with last year they commented about people being out this early however the context was “a show of hands who ran princess last weekend” before an apology about being up early… which like I said in last years post if you did run the Princess 10K last Saturday you’d be done well before 8:30 am (I was somewhere between the Halfway There mat and the finish at that point of the Gasparilla 15K myself)

I crossed the start at 8:36 and while it was a rough start as like I said there were definitely more walkers and joggers then faster runners out of the gate at mid-pack.

I slowed down a bit once I got toward the lake because of the birds

 

If this wasn’t a timed race I could of just stood there for a while just taking pictures and just admiring nature.

Shortly after this I had a slight wardrobe malfunction as the waistband of my pants decided to slip down almost over my stomach. There were no port-o-lets nearby so I just stopped for a moment off to the shoulder to pull my pants up. Now normally when I ‘race’ I like to tuck my shirt in and pin the top pins of my bib to my shirt and the bottom ones to my bottoms however it looked nicer with my shirt tucked out and I’m wondering if that was part of this issue. Thankfully this only happened once.

It was soon time to move over to one lane so the faster runners could come down the opposite lane and there was a good chunk of slow shuffling before I was able to weave around again and hit a stride.

I hit mile marker one in 17:22

I continued to move waiting for the inevitable change to the brick road which either happened later then usual or I was just moving much slower down this leg of the course then normal

In some years I would walk slowly down it to air on the side of caution but I instead continued the stride I was going on not letting it break me.

Reaching the water stops at fitbit timestamps 1.82 and 1.99 I didn’t grab a cup as I was carrying water with me and took those moments to just take a sip from my own personal bottle (I also paused for a sip just past mile marker one.)

I reached mile two in 36:02

I was soon back toward the lake and while I was past my PR time I felt accomplished as looking over my shoulder I wasn’t dead last so… SUCCESS (Though at the end of the day as long as I cross the finish mat on my feet does it really matter my place?)

I reached mile three in  54:49 though technically at this point while race wise I still had .10 to go I’d technically reached the 5K point.

My OFFICIAL time was 56:30 which was just over my 50-55 goal but still under an hour so it’s fine…stats wise it was 2 mins over my 5K splits in both events last weekend, 3 mins over my time last year and 14 mins over my PR

Run The Year Progress

286.36/2024

I’m 1.1 miles behind on my daily average to reach my year end goal

 

  

Upcoming races

• Promise Run 5K 3/2

• Bonnet Springs 5K 3/23

• Springtime Surprise 5K 4/19

• Springtime Surprise 10K 4/20

• Mayfair 5/11

PRs

• 1M {15:26} 3K {30:59} 5K {42:46} 8K {1:13:59} 10K {1:42:52} 15K {2:19:09} 10M {3:01:51} HALF {3:54:55} FULL {7:08:15*} *virtual full run in increments