Another huge perk of this race was that most of the race course is a portion of what I use to run my long training runs at the park. I don't know if it is necessarily always good to know what you are going into in terms of a race course, but I was excited to run it. About 2.5 miles of the course took place on a paved path at the Etowah Riverwalk at Sam Smith Park and the other .5 mile was getting from the start line to the path in the park.
With all of the crazy mileage I have been putting in over the past few weeks, my body was starting to feel tired obviously. While a few weeks ago I would have told you that this would possibly be a goal race for me, I knew that I needed to readjust my goals and not hurt myself. My goal today was to just simply run and not do anything dumb. I wanted to push myself a little, but I still wanted to be at a comfortable pace.
I am glad that I made the decision about the race beforehand because Mother Nature definitely has not been on Team Funner Runner the past few weeks. After the battle with the wind in Las Vegas last week, I cringed when I felt the wind gusts coming at me as I started. Not again! Seriously!?! It was one of those winds that seemed to have kept moving and was a headwind the entire time. Time to just make the best of the situation and enjoy my run.
Well, the course consisted of minor rolling hills throughout with one longer steady hill right before the mile 3 marker (see, knowing the course I knew what mile 2.7 had in store for me - haha). To be honest, I felt frustrated and a little defeated while running. Despite adjusting my goals prior to starting, I just got frustrated with myself for my body feeling tired.
I had no clue about how my pace was. I know myself too well, so I turned my watch in a way that I wouldn't check it while running. I crossed the finish line, hit stop, and looked down....
When they got to what we jokingly called the "old turkey" categories, most of the crowd was already gone. Congrats to Papa J who won 2nd place in his age group and Momma K and Sharon who won their age groups and each received a turkey! Gobble, gobble!