RunWaterloo Endurrace 8 KM Race Recap

Welcome to Friday. Put on your party hats, friends! We made it through the week!

I am not going to lie, it has been a bear of a week for me – it has been extremely stressful week at work and I had my first back to back workout with cycling and running and felt absolutely useless for the first 6 KM of my run. It’s good to be back to training hard and I love the ability to eat endlessly that comes with it!

I am looking forward to another active weekend of running and road riding, a birthday party and getting together with two groups of girl friends that I have not seen in ages.

Before I get on that, I wanted to chat about my race last weekend. I ran the Endurrace 8 KM which is a part of the RunWaterloo Racing Series. It was an evening race so I was a tad apprehensive because I am often tired by 6 pm and not in top racing form, but luckily, I have been doing some night training with my Health and Performance team and I truly think that helped at least the mental part of the race. I also have been battling with numb legs during racing which hugely affects my mental game, so I was expecting almost nothing. That and the fact I had been on my feet all day helping out at my father’s store left me feeling a bit grumpy as I stretched out and toed up to the starting line.
The course was in Elmira and was relatively flat but the true challenge of the race was the wind. I noticed at the starting line that my Garmin watch had died. I had JUST charged it and it threw off my game. I decided to phone the race in and just run by feel.

The first couple km of the race, I felt good. Like I said, it was a flat course and I was just focusing on how I was feeling, ignoring my time until my coach came biking alongside me and yelled that I was racing a sub-4 pace.

The mid-portion of the race was quite difficult. I was running with a pack and as we turned the corner, they shuffled behind me and used me to cut wind resistance. As soon as we hit the next road and the wind disappeared, they dropped me and I just focused on keeping proper form and moving as quickly as possible.

The final two kilometers, I felt fantastic and as I was approaching the finish line, my coach told me to sprint. I was really happy to find I had an extra kick left and passed the runner in front of me, finishing with a time of 33:12.

I dug back to the dusty archives of 2010 and pulled out my only other 8 KM time of 36:59. The last two races have been significant PR’s for me and even though I have a lot of room for improvement, it is so exciting to see the incredible difference that adding intervals and training with a team has done for my racing performance.

Official stats of race: Time: 33:12, 1st in age group, 2nd female, 14th runner overall.

It was a fun race and it was nice to run by feel alone. I love the races in the Run Waterloo Series and I am looking forward to doing another one of their races next weekend at the Baden 7 Miler. It’s a hilly course but I am feeling up to the challenge.

Did you race last weekend? Tell me about it!
Whatcha got on the go this weekend?