4th of July Weekend

I decided to do two races 4th of July weekend. The first race was the Run for the Arts Barrington 5k and 10k. I run a 4th of July race every year with my dad, and for the past couple years, we had been doing this one. Welllll, this year, he decided that he wanted to ride his road bike from Crystal Lake, IL to Henry, IL (small town by Peoria) with his buddy who is just as crazy as him. Luckily, my mom and I had a Chicago trip planned with my aunts and cousins for an aunt's 50th birthday and talked about running a 4th of July race together on our way down. Thanks to our train ride down, my mom and I decided that she would run in the race on Friday, making this run one of my first races ever with my mom since she "started running again."

Race morning comes and, after working a 10 hour day at LifeTime the day before, I was NOT ready at all. My legs were hurting a bit from a Brick workout Wednesday and from the standing at the Front Desk on Thursday. Buuuut, I decided to stop being a baby and run as fast as I had to in order to win. Luckily, it wasn't too fast. All of the super fast people decided to do the 5k (although after doin the 10k for the past two years, I can't imagine why... sarcastic, the 10k is SUPER hilly). My mom and I just stood around for awhile waiting for the race to start. When it did, I took off, determined to pass the boys with the blaring music on their iPods in front of me. The first mile was good, 625 just like Ry and I had talked about doing. The first mile is relatively flat, so I decided to save up a bit for the next five to come. Well, the next mile was a 645 and I looked behind me to find the second place girl and saw she was pretty far back. I decided, since I was running a 5k on Sunday and hoping to get out of my 19minute rut, I would save up a bit and just run to beat my time from last year and win. Basically, the rest of the miles, I pushed another guy with me and we finished pretty close together. I finished in a 41:30, 2 minutes faster thanmy 7minute pace last year (it was a training run). I went back and got my mom... she finished 17th female and 1st in her age group and beat my dad's time from last year... she had a great race!:)

On to the rest of the 4th festivities... Sunday was the First Annual Crystal Lake 4th of July run. It was to benefit the American Cancer Society as the person whose honor it was created in passed away from cancer. The race organizer is a family friend, so doing this race was a no brainer. Well, we get to the site (Lippold Park) and turns out, there were about as many volunteers (college kids!) as there were runners, which was sad to see:( But it was on a crushed limestone type path the whole way, not so much fun or easy to PR on. I went through the first mile on pace to break 19, but started falling off pace halfway through. It was pretty hot out again too, so I was just hoping to stay in the position I was (fifth overall at the first mile). Right after the first mile, I passed two guys (that got me going a bit!) and then again right before the two mile, one of the guys in front of me literally just stopped to walk. Did I mention Ryan ran this with me? Because he was the one to push me at about 2.5miles to go get the first place runner and WIN MY FIRST RACE OVERALL EVER! It was pretty exciting. I mean, even though it was a small race, it was still pretty exciting to WIN!:)

Next race to be recapped... LifeTime Fitness Triathlon July 12th.