Melissa Runs

To recap the race goals:

Goal A: Beat last year’s time

Goal B: 1:10 (11:17 pace)

Goal C: 1:07 (10:48 pace)

Goal D: 1:05 (10:29 pace)

Carly and I discussed the race a bit on Saturday during our run, and one of our non-negotiable goal was to run the entire race without stopping. We both agreed breaking an hour would be phenomenal, but probably not too realistic. Carly said even 1:05 would be a great time. We were on the same page.

Packet pickup was quick and painless at Luke’s Locker in downtown Austin. Here’s the contents of the swag bag and the race tee:

Race season started off with a bang!

We made it to the race site about 20 minutes before the start. The great thing about the IBM Uptown Classic is that while it draws a decent sized crowd, it is extremely organized and everything is executed well. This year marks it’s 12th anniversary.

Ready to run!

After the national anthem, the YMCA began blasting from the speakers and it was time for us to kill 6.2 miles.

An early mistake we made was starting too far back. It was really congested and hard to settle into our pace. After struggling through the masses, we passed the Mile 1 marker in 10:31.

We then headed into the Domain which gave us something to look at and distract us from the race for a few minutes.

We covered mile 2 in 9:45. Sub-10 pace? Awesome. We kept on truckin’, full speed ahead.

We flew through mile 3 in 9:25.

The race also had a 5k option, and as we ran next to their finish chute I heard “Melissa loves to sweat!” from the announcer over the loudspeaker. Why yes, yes I do. Want your own I ♥ Sweat shirt? This sweaty girl is the creator!

Mile 4 was a speedy 9:23.

Mile 5 is where things started to get tough. We encountered a grueling hill, and I heard a few expletives fly out of Carly’s mouth as it first came into view. My thoughts exactly.

We didn’t stop to walk, just kept focused on powering up the hill. Once we came over the top, my legs let out a few expletives of their own. I was SPENT! I wanted to walk so badly but kept going – it’s almost over, suck it up Melissa!While we didn’t stop running, our pace still dropped dramatically for mile 5: 10:40.

Halfway through mile 6, I glanced down at my Garmin and realized finishing under an hour would be out of reach. (Although, if it weren’t for the hill I think that goal would have been attainable.)

Mile 6 was another sub-10, 9:53. Once we passed that mile marker, we kicked it into high gear and hauled ass towards that finish line as fast as we could.

Official Finish Time: 1:01:36

We were ecstatic! Doing the happy dance all of the way back to the car. It was a 12 minute PR for me, and 9 minute PR for Carly.

I can’t think of a better way to kick off race season.

October 2nd marked our runniversary – it has been officially one year since our first race. It’s incredible how far we have come as runners in that time, and I’m glad we crossed the finish line next to each other yesterday.