St. Malachi Race Report

Yep that's right another race report!

With no local races falling this coming weekend I decided to partake in the St. Malachi 5 mile Race last Saturday. Tons of friends were there and ready to party afterwards. The race is pretty competitive and I was hoping that would drive me to a nice quick time. My goal going in was to run between 32 and 33 (6:20ish to 6:37 pace) based on my recent half and my past 10k races. Thursday night at yoga I noticed that I couldn't breathe out of my right nostril and by Saturday morning my nose was a runny mess. Not sure if I just didn't give my body enough time to recover from the rainy hard effort at Youngstown or if I was bound to catch a cold anyways since it seems like everyone is coming down with something, but I wasn't feeling stellar for this race.

Carpooled with GP over to the race and for once was super early so had plenty of time for a relaxed warm up with GP and Risko. Stripped down last second and forgot to take off my ear warmers. Temps were in the low 40s and I felt good in my Capri's and VR tank. Found two of my VR teammates at the start and lined up with them. Both gals are super quick short course gals and I was hoping I could hold my own and stay close to them. I had been told the first mile was downhill and super fast so my game plan was to have a blazing fast first mile, then try to run pace for the next 3, and hopefully not slow down too much on the final finishing uphill.

Well after the initial downhill the course was not to my liking one bit. Lots of 90 degrees turns in the first mile, an ice patch, a small incline, and a bridge with grated footing. Between that and my stupid heart rate monitor conitnually migrating to my belly I wasn't mentally in the right state to hear 6:04 for the first mile. Yes that is quick, but not nearly as quick as what I had assumed based on others description of the course.

I was running with TM at this point but she quickly surged ahead and I was soon passed by two more gals as we crossed another grated bridge. Now we we running on streets I am familiar with since I run them at lunch all the time so I tried to up the effort on the flats. Around mile 2 Eva passed me and looked good. I tried to go with her but didn't have the steam. I eventually got a grip and started to reel in one of the girls who passed me only to lose everything I had gained on her at a patch of ice (not willing to risk slipping in a tune up race). Heading into mile 3 there is a nice little climb for most of the mile which didn't help my pace any and I slowly fell back from Eva and the gal in blue. I tried to make it up on the downhill but once again lost my groove at the ice patch.

I was basically just in survival mode knowing I needed to push hard through mile 4 because the last mile split would be slow. In the last mile Durno caught me and made some crack about me running marathon pace and I told him I was dying out there. He said something about keeping my eyes on the prize but promptly rolled his ankle, and decided he better keep his eyes on the road and pulled ahead of me.

Thankfully no girls were around me as I trudged up the final hill because I had no steam left in me. Someone shouted that this was where all the hill training paid off and all I could think was this was proving my hill training hasn't helped at all :)

Finished in 33:13 which is a 6:39 pace and about a 2 minute PR for me. I'm happy I did so well despite feeling so bad, but since my current 10k and 5.3 mile (Blossom) PR paces are faster than this I know I can do better. Managed to snag 2nd in my age group and was about 8th gal overall. All the VR gals did great, TM placing 3rd overall and Eva finishing first in our age group. JC also placed in her age group and was on my heels.

Having been on the wagon for 7 weeks I decided to treat myself to a few post race brews which in retrospect was probably a bad idea since I still haven't kicked this sinus infection almost a week after it started.

It was good to get out and get in a hard effort and party after with friends even if the race didn't go quite as well as I would have hoped for.

If they take enough photos apparently I can look good while racing ;)