Weekend Double Podium :)

I was really wanting to do another half marathon after the Prague as I was feeling my form going up, but I got a big STOP from The Coach. Well there might be something about not racing 13.1 miles at full gear 3-4 weeks before marathon :) But I got permission to do some shorter races to make my legs moving and speed up. Which is my biggest struggle, I do have the endurance, I "just" need to speed up :)

We left for a conference last Wednesday and I wasn't expecting much from my Thursday night workout, planned for 12+ miles (20 km) at 8:18 min/mile (5:10 min/km). What a surprise when I was flying around the beautiful little dam at sub 8 min miles with such an easy feeling. It feels really great when everything clicks and works out :)

The conference was about diabetes and there was a Run against diabetes held one Friday afternoon. Only 3 km :) Feeling that good at my run made me want to compete. I had warm up plus 2 km at tempo pace and 1 km at race pace (for the 10 km on Saturday) scheduled by The Coach, so this was more or less perfect distance. I felt very confident, but kind of lost it when athletic looking girls started to show up :o Turns out, I still managed to be first female coming to the finish even with not going 100 % out for the first half of the race! The official finish time is 12:58.2 ... Nothing speedy for 3 km, but check the hill on the Garmin data :)

I was really happy finishing 1st female :)

After the race it was little over 300 km drive back to Prague, so I got to bed pretty late. Fortunately the 10 km race on Saturday started at noon :) I woke up not feeling 100 % fit! little headache and feeling of possible cold coming (turns out the feeling was right). But I had my breakfast, got everything ready and drove to the race (over 1 hour drive). I was quite on time, so not to much time to think. The race is organized by a friend of my friend, who I got to know and they really do good races, so I wanted to come to support them. It is called Hradec Cross 10 km, not because od it being cross country, but because the course actually forms a cross. The propositions said it was a flat course, I would disagree :)

I met few familiar faces, some ladies recognizing me from the blog another local I met at the Prague Half Marathon - she overtook me at about 18 km :( She looked so strong! Turns out she was the only faster female on this race day. We went out and of course there were few crazy people going out too fast. I wanted to settle in a comfortably hard pace but not go out too fast, keeping my heart rate around or under 177 BPM for the first half of the race. I am really happy that I stuck to my plan even though it meant people overtaking me on those first tiny up hills and on the bigger one between km 2 and 3. It paid off, I overtook most of them on the downhill or flat part :) Having 3 U turns on the course makes it pretty easy to see how your competition is doing. By the 2nd U turn I knew there was only Marcela ahead, the lady who overtook me in Prague Half :)

There was also a girl in RunGO tshirt behind (overtook me on the uphill, then could not catch up on the downhill). I was little anxious whether she will close up on me again. But I decided that I am coming to the finish first or second :) By the third U turn I thought I closed up a little on the leading lady, but I ran out of distance towards the finish to be able to get to her. My Garmin said 42:57, but the official time is 43:01 as the chip only measured the finish time from the gun time, not from crossing the line :) I don't care, it is 14 second personal best. I was hoping for bigger PB, but on the hills and with the coming cold, I will take it! (I woke up feeling super ugly on Sunday, spent all day in bed, same for Monday.)

Guess I was working hard to get to the finish...

Photo by hozeny

Great friends Jitka and Ondra came out so we can discuss some crazy plans and as Jitka happens to be a great photograph, it meant some cool photos from after the race :)

Photo by Jitka Sečková

Photo by Jitka Sečková

1st in the 30+ age group (the overall winner was 40+!!!)

Photo by Jitka Sečková

Garmin activity for 10 km race: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/478142396

What were your recent races?

Are you racing this weekend? :)