Monster Dash

Time for the Monster Dash was 2:45:23 pretty pleased with the time considering I didn't do much walking. With the Twin Cities Marathon being finished so recently it was nice to run another race but in the opposite direction and enjoy some down hill!  I remember at the TCM seeing a lot of pavement and today keeping my head up and looking downhill at all the people in front of me, good times.

35E was a disaster exiting this morning, ended up getting out of the car on 35 just short of the exit and hauled ass to the starting line.  Not much time to stretch, cold, but found my friend Juli that ran with me, kicked my ass too finishing in 2:20ish.  I had my phone with me, man this gave me so much additional piece of mind while running because I knew my pace time as I was running.  At the TCM I had to keep asking people and I was worried too much about the time, I am most pleased with my average time being so consistant between 12-13 minutes a mile.  I do wonder how I could have done with another 13.1 behind but we'll wait for 6/16 to show me that.   I signed up for the Ortho Series for 2012 so I'll have 5 runs to add to the Grandma's and TCM in Oct again.  My goal is to just improve my time event over event and see how much better I can get.

So now for the race.....

Started at a good pace, the pace team for finishing in 3 hours was back and forth with me but they were way off on their time by 90 seconds at the beginning and 60 seconds at the finish its a no wonder none of the original runners were with him anymore and he was running alone, he just killed their effort.  Felt great turning onto river road, most the run was down hill but there were also a few inclines.  Two scary ones but I ran through it and passed some walkers, that was nice.  Then we got to the half way point, felt so much better getting to the half way point and being on pace for the time I wanted to finish at!  Then down to the ten mile maker, this is where I walked for the first time, I walked about 2 minutes and kept my head up and kept going.  Its weird how watching people stop and walk makes me feel good as I pass them and how annoying the run/walkers are because it feels like they throw off my breathing routine.

Mile 10.5 felt good watching the ten mile people finish and knowing I was that much closer to the ending!  I called Stacey to let her know where I was and then kept plugging away.  I knew the next hill was coming but didn't realize how HUGE it was!  Shepperd Road at about mile 11.5 was a LARGE intense up hill run, I kept telling myself "you can do this, don't walk, you can do this" but I made it a third of the way up and had to walk again.  Half way up I started running again I knew I was close.

Saw the finish line and saw the 13 mile sign and I picked up the pace, saw Aaron and he got a shot of me coming down. Saw Stacey at the first beeper pad, she said people were hauling ass but stopping there not realizing there was another stopper, I mean come on it said finish line another 100 feet up you have to get to the finish line!

Next race is 1/1 for the polar dash!  Hope to get my time down to 2:40 or so but it will be freezing and not sure how to run in the winter vs. summer so I'm preparing myself for the worst.