Irish Sprint 10K Race Report

This race was by far the hardest, but also the most rewarding I've run to date. The web page described it as "challenging". The web page did not lie.

My day began at 3 am with an animal yowling outside my window. That animal turned out to be one of the cats that we'd accidentally shut out on the deck. As soon as he got in the house, he ran under our bed and continued to growl and spit for the rest of the night. So that was the end of sleep.

My husband, daughter and I were up, fed (well hubs and I ate anyway, we had to pick up some nutrigrain bars for daughter), dressed and out of the house by 6 am. The race was in a national park, with inadequate parking, so we had to take shuttle buses to the start.

The port o potty situation was dismal. Maybe 20 port o potties for 2000 runners. I've never been so jealous of men before, as many just chose to take a trip into the woods. Lucky bastards. I must've waited 20 minutes to pee, and was getting a bit nervous about making the start time. It all worked out though. Oh, and the national anthem was played on bagpipes, it was awesome.

Runners were to start in waves, based on your estimated finish time. My daughter was in the first wave, husband in the second and I was in the third (but not the last wave!!!). It took over 8 minutes for me to even get to the start line after the gun went off.

We started out on asphalt with an easy downhill then a slight uphill, no biggie. After a cool boardwalk, we turned a corner to hit the first trail portion of the race. There was a Marine posted at the corner who smiled and told us we had a 1 mile hill ahead of us. I thought he was joking. He wasn't. It was really and truly the neverending hill from hell. About halfway up, mired in my own misery and pain, I shouted "Holy BALLS, this hill is huge!". I felt better getting that out. I was SO excited to reach the peak, knowing I could catch my breath on the downhill. Until I got a look and the next hill waiting for me. *sigh* I looked down at my Garmin and saw that I was running a 12:30 min/mi, and knew there was no freaking way I was going to get a PR (personal record) and beat my last 10K time.


We finally reached the asphalt again, and luckily it was mostly downhill and I got to relax into my run and pick up my pace. Around mile 4 was the second water station. I knew I needed some and I knew I needed a bit of a break, so I allowed myself to walk through it. Then, with dread, I turned back on to the trail. We went through rolling hills until we reached a cool suspension bridge that we had to run single file across. This thing really messed me up as it was bouncing up and down with all the runners and it felt like you were running across a bouncy house. *barf* And, just to keep things fun, they decided to end the race with another large, fairly steep trail uphill. Awesome. We were pretty deep in the woods, but I could hear the crowds and music at the finish line. I will admit to walking for the second time for a few steps. Until suddenly, miraculously I heard "Good Feeling" by Flo Rida being played. This is my jam! I listen to it on almost every single training run! It gave me the extra boost I needed to push myself over the top of the hill and down to the finish. I looked down at my time and realized I'd picked up my pace enough to PR! Official chip time 1:08:48! Over a minute faster than November's 10K on a relatively flat course! My fitness level is most definitely going up!