Facebook has figured out that I love running and have done quite a few virtual races so it suggests different virtual races for me to run in the advertisements that pop up. I saw the stemless wine glass tumblers for this race and loved them! I showed them to my mom and she was all about it. She signed us all up. I wanted to do this the week of Christmas and planned to do it on Wednesday the 23rd but my legs just weren't feeling up to par so I pushed it back to Thursday, Christmas Eve, which seemed pretty perfect! When I ran on Wednesday morning it was 57 degrees which would have been a bit warm for me to race in right now since I'm used to the cold and my legs felt dead so I knew I made the right decision. Thursday morning I woke up excited to run faster with a tempoish run. The temps were much colder with a 17 degree wind chill! I ran a 2 mile warm up with 3 short strides to get my legs warmed up and going. Then I re-started my Garmin so I'd have my time at 3.1.
I took off and felt pretty darn good. I figured I'd be much slower than I was for my Turkey Trot since I've been running all easy with no speed work or anything since early December. I was excited when I went through the first mile in 6:47 which wasn't too much off my pace from the Thanksgiving race. Although I was running a virtual race, I really couldn't get motivated to actually race this one. I think the cold weather didn't help. I saw my pace was slipping in the 2nd mile when I checked it, but just didn't feel motivated to run any harder. My 2nd mile was 6:54 so not too bad. During the last mile I felt more like I would at the end of a tempo than at the end of a race but I also knew if I had any hope of breaking 21 minutes I'd have to really take off and if I was going to be over 21, I didn't really care by how much. My last mile was 6:50 and I could have kicked harder the last 1/10th of a mile but I had a small uphill and just kind of finished. I ran the last portion in 6:51 pace for a finishing time of 21:20. That was an average pace of 6:51. If I were just starting back with speedwork and tempos right now and that was my pace for a tempo, I'd be pumped. So I'm just looking at this as a strong tempo for me. I enjoyed it and had fun the whole time. Plus I got to drink a glass of wine out of my tumbler that evening with my family at Christmas Eve dinner which was a win! I ran a 2 mile cool down after and then spent the morning trying to warm back up!
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