Last week was an interesting week. The weather was wonderful (finally) and we had a decent week. Kimi and I ran every day of the week. To say it was without struggle would be a lie but we managed to get through enough to give Rock the Parkway a shot. We'll get to that in a bit. First, let's detail how the week actually went.
We started off running solid miles and at pretty decent paces. Since moving to our new home at the end of February, we are still trying to establish some decent routes. Kimi came up with a new one that would allow us to get on some asphalt (rather than sidewalks) and off the South Creek Greenway trail (at least some). The new route is a bit tougher than some of the other routes we have been running lately. We ran that route early in the week and did quite well. The plan was to do a speed workout on Wednesday night. We drove up to the Frisco Trail so we could give it a go. The plan was to run 1k, 1k, 800, 800, 600, 600, and then some 400's to finish out. The weather was decent so we both thought it was going to be a good workout. However, during the warm-up, both of us simply felt sluggish. It was suddenly difficult to run a warm-up pace. We made an executive decision and decided to cut the workout for that evening and give it a shot the next morning instead.
Thursday morning was crazy windy, and warm. Not complaining about the warmth since this is much appreciated. The warm up was quite a bit better than the night before but still didn't feel great. Knowing that we were going to be racing in a couple days, we decided to shorten the workout and eliminate the 600's. We started the first 1k and worked ourselves into it. Not our greattest split but not terrible either. The second 1k was quite a bit better. Our 800's were both reasonable though taxing. After the two 800's we were both feeling the fatigue. Let's just say that our 400's didn't go great but we did manage to get through the workout eventually.
Rock the Parkway is one of the events that Kimi and I have both run before and simply ran ok at. Two years ago, Kimi ran Rock the Parkway and was the overall winner with a time in the 1:19's and I had a top 10 finish with a time around 1:16:30. The goal of this weekend was to complete the half running hard and using it as a workout. I started out relatively conservative compared to my more recent halfs running the first mile in 5:50 and the second around 5:45. It was around the 3rd mile that I knew it was going to be a difficult day. I was simply laboring much too hard at this point in the race to really think I was going to run a great time. I did manage to hang onto 5:50 miles for a good portion of the event until about mile 7-8 where a pretty good hill got me. I couldn't manage to keep the mile under 6:00. In fact, that mile clipped off around 6:10. Thankfully I managed to get it going again as soon as I got back to the parkway for the return trip. The return trip wasn't nearly as easy thanks to the head wind but I managed to fight hard as I could see the 9th place runner and 10th place runner both struggling and slowly coming back to me. I pressed onward hoping that I could still get that top 10 finish that I had achieved 2 years ago.
With 3 miles remaining, I was now running solely in 9th place with the 10th and 11th runners trailing just a little ways back. I started to feel my big toes developing some monster blisters on them (just like the last time I ran this event). It was becoming painful and I wasn't sure how I was going to get through to the finish. Then I reminded myself, it's going to hurt no matter the pace, but the sooner you get back, the sooner you get your shoes off to relieve some pressure. So I pressed the pedal down again with a mile to go. I had gone from running 5:50 pace to now letting it all go at a clip of 5:35 pace. I could just almost see the finish when I heard the 10th place finisher creep up right next to me. I dug deeper and dropped the pace down to 5:31 almost immediately. Thankfully, he didn't have much fight left in him and he quickly fell back behind. I pressed the remaining .1 mile to the finish and was actually somewhat pleased with how I finished up. I stood at the finish waiting for Kimi. I was very pleased to see her coming in with no other females in sight. She was going to be the winner for the second time at this event.
All in all, it was a good week. We now know that we both have a lot of work to do to get ourselves ready for our next big event coming up in June. Be prepared to be impressed as our miles start to ramp up and we start rolling in the near future.
Check out the progress in our house remodel!
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