Running Season has offically started

This year I ran the Broad Street Run, this is the 3rd year in a row that I've ran it, and the 4th time overall.  Its the nations biggest 10miler it was capped once 30,000 people signed up and actually sold out in a few days.  Broad Street is one of those runs that sneaks up on your timing-wise since its always the first Sunday in May.  It's tricky when you're training because you think that you have more time than you do, and if you're a fair-weather runner like myself - with no access to a treadmill, you probably just started running outside at the end of March.  10 miles is something you need to train for, if you want to have a decent time that is :) and speaking of training mine was all over the place this year.  The problem was that the 7 weeks leading up to Broad Street (prime training time) also happened to be what the 6 weeks of Crossfit Sectionals which released 1 workout per week and at my gym we were competing to spots individually and the top 3 women and top 3 men would be selected to represent our gym at regionals on a team.  Crossfit decided to release one workout per week for a total of 6 workouts over 7 weeks.  The workouts were tough too, and we meant to pull the top athletes to the top.  Weights were heavy and movements were technical - the workouts for sectionals were intense and pretty much limited my running training to one day per week to do a long-ish run and then if I had enough time/energy I threw some speedwork in - 400m repeats or a short tempo run - during the week.  As race day approached, I knew I could do 10 miles, I just wasn't sure how fast I'd be able to do it.  Ideally my goal was to match my time in 2009 where I ran it in 1:15 and change, but with my sporadic training that was more focused on Crossfit workouts, I wasn't sure where my cards would fall.

On race day, we did what most non-city living people who run do, got up real early, drove to the stadiums, parked, and crammed on the subway for the 25 minute subway ride to the race start.  Let me tell you, that ride makes you wonder why the heck you're going to run all the way back!  This year the weather was great, it was sunny mid-50s/low 60s and definitely a beautiful day for a run.  At the start I felt great and did through mile 5, mile 5 - 6 was a little slow for me - my legs didn't have that fire in them.  But I psyched myself back up and got back on pace.  I had one more slow mile from 8 - 9 where I started to think about how crazy I must be to have signed up for a half ironman this fall...that will have to be another blog post.  I got to the finish line and finished strong on the last half mile, although it didn't feel particularly good and I was happy to be done.  I crossed with a time of 1:17:25 on my watch and an official time of 1:17:30 - respectable considering my training was primarily Crossfit but not 100% where I wanted to be.  I guess there is always next year - I know where my weak spots were, miles 5-6 and 8-9...just got to keep my pace there and I'll hit my 1:15 target.

Looking at my stats though I didn't do too bad.  I finished just outside the top 10% of those that ran and in the top 10% of my divison (which I think is my age group).  Next year I'm going to listen to my running coach and focus more on speedwork and make sure I'm giving myself more adequate recovery time.  Hopefully Crossfit will change things up for sectionals next year and go back to the one day format - personally that fit into my life and training schedule much better.