tales of a running mom: Trails To Ale 10K- 9.20.09

This by far has to be one of the best races...for a few reasons...

1. The course is super flat and fast.... I like that.

2. 3.5ish miles of the course is around Back Bay, which I love to run!

3. There is FREE beer and pizza at the finish line...seriously? Amazing!

The Portland Trails to Ale was my 3rd 10K...make that my 3rd race period, and my best time so far (which I'm still not sharing because I'm still not happy about it:-). Considering there were no hills and it's the fastest course that I've run, I would hope it was my best time.

I have a hard time getting up early in the morning, and since all these races start anywhere between 7:00-8:00am I need to get up early. I' had been reading that you need to eat at least 2 hours before the race which meant 5:00am! Yikes! I was still working on the pre race breakfast thing... this time I had a banana and peanut butter with high hopes that it would fuel me and not come up at the end.

I ran this race with Ruddley and my amazing friend and inspiration, Kate. Seriously, this girl is awesome (D1 softball player, 1/2 marathon, marathon, sprint triathlon... you name it, she'll do it!). Kate told me she would run with me and I warned her, I run like a turtle. She assured me she would stay with me during the whole race because she was "out of shape"...Yeah. Right! Kate stayed with me for the first 2ish miles before she asked if it was ok if she went ahead...(see, I told you she was nice. She felt bad for leaving me in the dust!). Kate took off, Ruddley was ahead of me and I was running alone...again. Seems to be a theme so far "Sarah, don't worry, I'll stay with you" and then they realize I mean it when I tell them I am slow and they take off. I kind of like it though, I just turn my ipod up wayyyyy too loud and zone out and run. I haven't mastered the whole talking and running thing yet so I don't mind being on my own. At some point my friend Jim passed me, tapped me on the shoulder and said "pick it up slow poke"...thanks Jim for your kind words of encouragement:-). He too took off ahead of me.

Around mile 5 I saw a guy power puking on the side of the road and I just thought to myself "don't look...don't look.... at least it's not you this time". I got to mile 6 where the dude was calling out the time (at this point I still didn't wear a watch while running). I was 20 seconds from my goal time and started to sprint, and then my brain kicked in. I realized I couldn't run .2 miles in 20 seconds so I slowed down a little, did not want another finish like the LL Bean, and finished strong. Oh! And the banana and peanut butter worked wonders! I could have eaten a little more though... next time!