Week/Weekend Update/Marvelous Monday-Cherry Blossom Recap

It’s Monday!!!!

It’s Monday and so that means linking up with Tara for another edition of Weekend Update!  This is my 3rd time participating and as I have said before,  Mondays are a bit more fun now because I get to share with you all about my weekend and I also get to see what everybody else did over the weekend!

I also found another Monday link up: Katie for Marvelous in my Monday! How awesome because although Mondays are tough-I actually like the start of the week and setting new goals for the week. Welcome Marvelous Monday!

Is 3 link-ups too many for 1 post-oh well. Hey another link up as Courtney from Eat Pray Run DC invites me to add my Cherry Blossom Re-Cap to her link-up. Thanks Courtney!

This past week is actually a blur as it was Spring Break for the kids. I stayed home with them 3 out of the 5 week days and they seem to just fly by.

Easter Monday:

We extended our trip to NYC and spent another day with my dad.  The kiddies were having so much fun with him, I said the hell with it-we will stay another day. They were so happy.

One of the highlights of out extended stay was on Monday as we were packing the car, we saw what we thought were someone’s green parrot perched on a tree in my father’s yard.  Come to find out they were actually mock parrots.  Here is a nice interview that I found about them also http://brooklynparrots.com/. They were beautifully green and tropical which was a sight to see in the middle of the city 🙂

I thought one more day might also reduce the traffic back into DC…..yeah not so much

:(- thanks Spring Break travelers (me included-ha!)

Thankfully, the kids’ god mother lived on the way home so we stopped by for a little visit to let traffic die down.

Tuesday:

I got in an easy 3 mile run (Last run before Cherry Blossom) and did #rockyourcore abs.

Tuesday night:

I was honored to be present at my mom’s induction to the Omicorn Kappa Upsilon Dental Honors Society as a lifetime member.

Wednesday- I don’t remember and I don’t have any pictures from that day….LOL!!!

Thursday:

My son’s 7th birthday!  He had wanted to go downtown to see the monuments but the weather was not conducive for that so we went to Bounce U and Chuckie Cheese!  He is such a low key kids and I love it. As long as his sister is with him, he is fine #warmsmyheart

Friday was recover day from Thursday bithday fun and Saturday I went to the Race Expo and got race ready.  Read Soleful Saturday Post here.

Sunday was RACE DAY…….

Cherry Blossom Recap…….

This was the 1st time that I had not stayed in the city or location of the race. I have such race day anxiety of missing the race due to over sleeping, train mishaps, flat tires, etc. that I usually stay in a close hotel the night before to alleviate that stress.  I didn’t stay this time because my usual Sole mates and run support were not running this race and they are usually who I share the room with.

This meant having to get up at the crack of dawn (alarm went off at 4:30am….uuugh!) and being at the train by 5:30 to meet some of the ladies from my BGR group at the train station.  Myself and 2 other girls didn’t get the memo that the time was changed to meet up at 6am instead of 5:30…..wait that means I could have gotten 30 minutes more sleep-dang it!!!!

Anyway, after meeting up, the train ride down was crowded but overall pretty smooth.

The day started out a bit chilly and I decided not to gear check my jacket and long sleeve (I would be down to a tank top by the end of the race!)  The Cherry Blossoms were beautifully in bloom and the sun was shining….it was a perfect day for running!

There were so many racers. I don’t know the total count but I felt like this was the most participated race that I have run in. Some of the people may have been Cherry Blossom tourists but there were just swarms of people.

Before the start of the run, we were informed that the course would be cut short by about .5 due to an accident and police investigation. The race I think had 5 corrals all starting about 4 minutes after each other to allow for less congestion.  Even though I had looked at the map a few times, i still didn’t get the full picture of where we were racing until in the race course-ha!.

My initial plan was to run with the 10:30 pace group. I found the pacer and stayed close to her hip for about the first 1/2 mile.  I am not claustrophobic (or maybe I am) but tight crowds with what feels like mo way of escape freaks me out so I am always that runner that runs on the outside of the pact.  As I couldn’t stay in the middle of the pack and had to escape to the outside of the race crowd, I lost the pacer by mile 1.  It was all good though because I had my virtual partner set on my Garmin at 10:30, so I was able to use that to keep in pace.

Mile 1-5 remained quite congested. It was hard to get a good rhythm in as I kept running up on someone or someone on me. The other challenge I had was that for these miles most of the course was out and back and I felt myself being a bit off balanced passing runners running towards me. The sun had also come out with full vengeance and so by mile three both my jacket and long sleeve were off and around my waist.

Did I mention I mention how beautiful the day was!!!! Between the weather and the scenery of the monuments and the cherry blossom, I could have taking pictures all day but then I wouldn’t have finished the race! LOL!!!

Mile 5-this is where the race path started to clear somehow. I finally felt that I could run without tripping over people outside of the mad dash and crowd when water stops were coming up.  Since I had my hydration pack on, I didn’t need to stop for water and I used the water stop posts as reminders for me to hydrate.

Mile 6 or so took us into Haines Point on Ohio Drive which is usually the hardest run as this area is FLAT-FLAT-FLAT and boring but because of the Cherry Blossoms and a nice DJ along the course the Haines Point miles were great!

As we exited Haines Point there were signs along the way that gave 1200, 800, 400 to go.  This was great motivation and encouragement to pick up the pace slightly and finish strong.

There was a slight incline up to the slight downhill finish and the crowd support was awesome the last 1200m or so. The cheers of the crowd really helped my pump and finish strong.

Here are my Run Pix Race Results: This is kind of a neat feature actually:

My goal was a 1:45 finish which would have been a 10:30 pace-I finished at 1:41 with a 10:10 pace. BOOM!!

After the race, I made my way to the medal pic up lanes to collect my medal. I am so glad that I paid the extra whatever it was for the medal. It is a beauty!!!

There wasn’t much of any kind of after run snacks which was a bit disappointing. I wanted something other than a banana. I forgo the banana and replenished with my very berry Nuun!

I waited for the rest of my BGR girls to finish up and got in some more individual and group pictures.  I also got to meet one of my 2015 miles in 2015 running partners in person which was an added bonus to the day!

Overall this race was AMAZING!!!! I had said that I would not redo any race but I think Cherry Blossom will always be a race that I will try to participate in!

I will continue to use my races in 2015 to help me determine my comfortable race pace. Running between 10:00-10:30 seems to be most comfortable for me at this time.

After the race, I met up with my football girls-we won their game 22-0-what a way to start the season!

I slept like a baby last night and probably could still be sleeping right now! LOL!! All worth it though!

I will rest today (Monday) and Tuesday and then training for Zooma Half begins.

Did you race this weekend? Did you participate in the Cherry Blossom? Are there any races that you do every year? What races are you training for this Spring?