Spavinaw Centennial Celebration 5k

During my stent off running to heal my knee, a friend asked me to run the Spavinaw Centennial Celebration 5k because her friend was the race director. After I ran the Jenks 5k and was so close to breaking 22 minutes, I decided to go for it at this race. I was hopeful after an extra week back running I might be able to break 22 minutes and give myself a big confidence boost going into the Pitt Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. The race didn't start until 9am so I slept in until 7, ate breakfast, did yoga, and headed to the race. I run out at Lake Yahola sometimes and I knew the race was around there. There isn't much parking in the area so I wasn't sure how that would work. I figured I'd have to park a ways off and run to the start, no big deal since I'd need a couple miles to warm up anyway. I got to the parking lot and they had shuttles driving people to the start, I didn't want to do that and waited until the shuttle left so I could see which way to go to get to the race start and took off for my warm up. I ran a 2 mile warm up with 4 strides at the end like I had for the Jenks 5k.

Winnings, they had finisher medals, but I didn't want one.

A little before 9:00 I headed toward the race start. It was weird because no one was making announcements to get people to head to the race start. I started wondering if the race was going to start late because they were still shuttling people down or something. Then at 9:00 a race volunteer walked over to the timing tent and from the conversation they had, it sounded like the race organizers thought the timing people were in charge of starting the race and the timing people ended up starting the race for us. I was impressed with how quickly they pulled things together and got us going after not realizing they were expected to start the race. We took off at 9:01. I knew it was going to be hard to beat my time from last week because it was so windy. On the way out, I thought maybe the wind wasn't as bad as I thought warming up, but later realized it was because it was a cross wind that was mostly at our backs for the first half of the race. The race was an out and back. I saw my friend, Johnny, and his dog Shadow right in front of me. I ended up pretty much maintaining the gap behind him the whole race.

I went through the first mile in 6:52 and I was not feeling strong at all. The first half mile, I kept thinking, "I don't feel as strong and fluid as last week." I told myself to just hold on until the turn around and then see what I had left for the way back. I counted that I was 9th overall and figured I could catch some of the men ahead of me. We hit the turn around and I immediately felt the wind at my face. It was gusting very strongly and I knew picking up the pace and negative splitting would not be happening. I saw the 2nd place female and I had a very safe lead on her. I just kept my eyes ahead and focused on sticking with Johnny, not letting him gap me any more than he already had. I went through the 2nd mile in 7:09 and was pleased it was faster than I thought it would be. I felt like I had slowed down a lot more than that. Thinking back, I had for the 2nd half of the mile and it was the first half of the mile with the wind mostly at my back that kept my mile split from being as slow as the pace I was currently running. 

I remembered running down a gradual, not steep decline around 0.4 miles into the race so I was dreading that uphill on the return trip. I was really dreading it. I ended up thinking I missed it because I never really noticed it. Knowing I had a nice gap on the 2nd place female, I was so tempted to give up and coast in because I was feeling really rough. I told myself to keep pushing because it would be a good workout. Thankfully I had Johnny right in front of me and focusing on staying with him kept me from giving up and slowing down. I felt badly that I was able to have him pull me along, but was up with him to help him. He said knowing I was right behind him really helped him push during the race, so I'm glad I was able to help him even though I couldn't catch up to him. After the top male finished, the lead motorcycle drove back to lead me into the finish. Johnny said when the motorcycle pulled up beside him, he knew I was right behind him and kept waiting for me to sprint past him. I was really trying to catch up to him, I just had nothing left. He mentioned me "letting him beat me" and I told him there was no letting, I ran as hard as I could! My 3rd mile was 7:21 and my finishing kick was 6:47 pace. When I finished I dry heaved a bit as I walked to get water, so that was a bit embarrassing. I finished in 22:08. Which sounds better than it was, only 7 seconds slower than last week in worse conditions, but I averaged 7:07 pace compared to 7:00 pace last week.

I originally planned to run my cool down out to my car to get sweats, but decided to run my cool down out on the course so I could cheer on my friend, Julia, and everyone else as they finished. During my cool down I realized the first half of the race was a slight decline the whole way so the second half was a slight incline the whole way. That made me feel a bit better about my 2nd half being so much slower! There were signs out on the course that I noticed as I was racing, but didn't read. I enjoyed reading them on my cooldown. They had facts about water and the Spavinaw Water System. They also had some water themed jokes that I enjoyed and will include at the end of this post. I felt like it and wanted to read all the signs, so decided to run the whole course again as my cool down. When I got back to the start area I found my friend, Julia, and we waited in line to get our free hot drinks. After that they said the awards ceremony would be starting at 10:30. We only had a few minutes so I decided to just go without my sweats as I wouldn't have time to get to my car and back. It turned out they started the "ceremony" 15 minutes late because they were waiting on the mayor to arrive. Then, once he arrived, it was actually a ceremony for the centennial of the Spavinaw Water System which lasted for almost an hour and then they quickly passed out awards afterward. I was so annoyed and wished I would have just left. I'm pretty sure they told runners it was an awards ceremony so people wouldn't leave and it would look like there were more people there for the ceremony. I felt bamboozled and ended up not getting home until 12:30 which really annoyed me! Not to mention sitting there freezing during the whole ceremony!

I was 7th out of 182 overall and 1st overall female. They ran out of fun run bibs and gave some of the fun runners 5k bibs so it shows a woman ahead of me, but she was actually in the fun run. She and her daughter both did the fun run and they took her daughter out of the results on Saturday, but the mom is still listed. The 5k and fun run started together and they announced for fun runners to line up behind the 5k runners, even so I expected to have some fun runners up front who would impeded us, but I had no issues. We ran through some fun runners at the end of the 5k, but there weren't very many since most had finished before I came through, so there were no issues with the 5k and fun run starting together (at least from my standpoint). 

I've been using my cup every day for my morning coffee.

Jokes from signs:

What do you call a Yeti who lives on a lake?
A weti

What does a fish say when it swims into a wall?
DAM!

If H20 is water, what is H2O4?
To drink and swim in, silly!