Saturday, March 14, 2009

NYRR 800 Race Report

This was the first time I ran the NYRR 8000, about 4.9 miles. It was a rather enjoyable race despite my feeling less than 100%. Let's face it; sometimes as a female, there are just days where it's not fun to do any type of physical activity. Today was such a day. A tiny part of me thought about forgoing this race, but the thought was squashed immediately. 

I went to bed at 10:30pm to get a full night's sleep but my mind just wandered all over the place, from work to freelance to the home contract. I tried to focus just on the course and eventually fell asleep much later than anticipated, and woke up several times throughout the night. My final wake up time was about 4:18am. I had my alarm set for 5:00am so I just got up, got dressed and left the house by 6:00am to head to the NYRR headquarters to pick up my number. 

The trains were running faster than normal, so I got to 89th Street by 7:10am. The race didn't start until 8:30am at 102nd Street so I walked over and to get my free t-shirt and get situated. The baggage area was staged in a park of Central Park that is used as a dog park. I sat on a rock in the hill and just watched the dogs run for a while. There was this cute beagle that just wanted to play with all the other dogs. Makes me want to get one!

I got pretty cold just sitting there, so after a while I just got up and jogged around a bit until I heard the race director call people to the corrals. Since I woke up so early I was pretty tired, but what sort of affected my performance was that I didn't eat enough on the way over. I got hungry by the time I got to the start. However, it was only 5 miles, so it wasn't that bad. I knew I was going to get an apple and a bagel at the end. 

The race started off good enough. The course started on a slow rolling hill and bypassed the infamous Harlem Hill. I was glad I didn't have to face that today. I took quick walk breaks at the water stations and kept my usual pace. What I didn't remember was that we still had Cat Hill, which wasn't as steep as Harlem Hill, but it was a steady climb back up to the 80s. With 1 mile left, I started to push the pace a bit and kept my focus on the top of the trees. I got to the finish line in a full sprint.

Official time: 58:40 (11:48 pace). A little slower than my 11:16 5k pace from last race, but a bit faster than the last 5 mile I did at 11:51. All in all, a decent showing. I think had it been a 5 miler I would've definitely PRed!

2 comments:

ShirleyPerly said...

Congrats!! Sounds like a great run despite the hunger pangs at the start.

peter said...

Nice run, Lisa. Way to bring it in. It's hard to keep up your energy when you have an empty stomach.