Day 36: Wicked Frosty Four: January 1st, 2014

Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope you all had a fun New Year’s Eve and are ready and excited for 2014.  I, for one,  love making resolutions, and can’t wait to get them all written down, planned out, and started 🙂  I’m thinking that sometime in the next week or so I’ll do a post with a 2013 re-cap and a 2014 running resolution list, but for now: a race re-cap!

At 10 AM this morning, Jeff and I lined up with all the other serious crazy runners who wanted to start the New Year off the funnest way we know how: Running!

It was a beautiful morning, but oh so cold! When we left the house it was only 17F, but my phone told me that it would be 21F by the time the gun went off.  It wasn’t really the temperature that made it so cold, it was the wind.  Luckily, we got there just before ten, so we didn’t have to wait too long for the race to start, and once we started running, the temperature wasn’t really a problem any more.

Last year, we decided to do this race last minute and without any particular goal in mind. I thought it would be fun to try and push myself a little and then do it again a year later and compare.  Well, it’s been a good year for me in terms of running, and it was great to see the difference in my time between this year and last.

Like last year, I didn’t run all out, but I did push myself.  I took the first mile “easy” to get warmed up, and prevent myself from going out fast.  No matter how easy I think I’m running the first mile of a race, it’s always faster than I think.  This one we finished in 9:22.

After the 1st mile, we picked it up a bit.  The second mile had a few hills – it’s funny, we run part of this course in reverse on a regular basis, and one of the uphills we did today I had never noticed before as a downhill.  I guess that explains why I always start feeling good at that point when I’m going the other direction – haha.  In spite of the hills, we finished mile 2 in about 9:17.

Mile 3 we continued to keep pace, we had run through downtown Salem in the early miles, passed the harbor and the House of Seven Gables, and were now running by the water and in more residential areas. We held on through a few more hills, and finished in 9:15.

Mile 4 started on an uphill, but once we reached the top we picked up the pace in order to finish strong.  At one point during the last mile, a woman in a car pulled out into the middle of the race and was driving alongside all the runners. It was a bit obnoxious, but the idea that I was “running faster than a car!” gave me a little boost. 🙂  Once the car got out of our way, we had about a quarter mile to go (and another little hill), and we pushed through to finish in exactly 36 minutes.  I’ll have to check my watch, but we must have been pretty speedy in that last mile to finish with an average of 9 minute miles!

Last year, our final time was 42:21 (10:35/mile), so this year was a significant improvement!  And because this is an uncommon race distance, a personal record by over 6 minutes!  A great end to the run streak and a nice way to start the New Year!