Elizabeth 8K

Last weekend I ran my very first 8K race!  The Elizabeth 8K is the oldest road race in Charlotte and goes through my beautiful neighborhood.  This year was it's 31st year!  I really wanted to run it last year, but my extreme morning sickness during the early weeks of my pregnancy meant that I was nowhere near being ready to run it.

For whatever reason I was SUPER nervous for this race.  As I mentioned, I had never raced an 8K before and actually in my post baby #2 running the farthest I had run was 4 miles.  So this was going to be a new experience all around.  I couldn't sleep the night before and couldn't even finish my coffee the morning of!  I was a jumble of nerves during my 10 minute walk to the starting line.  (Yep, a 10 minute walk to the starting line, that was awesome!)  Soon enough about 700-800 other runners were lined up and we were off!  By comparison, the Shamrock Shuffle had under 200 people so I am glad I started with such a tiny race to get my feet wet again!

I had some technical difficulty when the gun first went off.  My Apple Watch wouldn't connect with my iPhone so I had to get my phone out while running to start my running app.  Of course that never happened before so it figures it would happen during the race.  Then I accidentally paused my playlist and had to get my phone out again.  I was a mess!  Once I got myself sorted, I fell into a quicker pace than I had run my previous 5K.  I was consistently running 9:55/9:56, which I was happy with, considering my absolute current lack of running shape.  I found a girl who was running the same pace as me and didn't let her out of my site.

The second half of the race though, holy hills!!!  I mentioned in my last blog that I haven't incorporated any specific hill training into my running yet.  I'm just working on building up a base and very gradually increasing my weekly mileage so I don't get injured.  The hills kind of killed me in this race. Every time I thought they were over, another one was around the bend.  I still managed to sprint past a few people at the very end so that always feels good!  I felt awesome when the race was over!  I was, however, sad not to see my family at the finish.  My almost 4 year old was taking too long to leave the house so they missed my whole race!

I ended up having a 10:16/mile pace for this race.  Much like the Shamrock Shuffle 5K I ran a few weeks ago, I went into this race with zero time expectations.  I only have the goal of finishing these races without walking and attempting to stay consistent with my splits. Now next year I will have times to work on beating, which I have no doubt will happen because I will have more than 2 months of running under my belt!

I'm specifically training for the my next race:  the Spartan Sprint (next week!!) so I used these two races to check in on my progress.  Last year's Spartan Sprint in Charlotte was 6 miles.  You don't run the whole distance straight through though because you have obstacles (and burpees when you fail the obstacle) all along the race. I'm working on my running so I can cut off some time from last year's race.  I actually do have a time goal for the Spartan in mind and am already getting slightly nervous for the obstacles I think I will see in my race!