The Waiting is the Hardest Part...

I managed to survive the weekend.  The 2011 Corporate Challenge is done, all that there is left to do is to wait for the results.  Why do I have to participate in one of the three events that it seems to take days to get results for?  They have yet to post the 10k/5k/5k cycle results and I am dying to know how I did.

I ran the women's mile on Friday night, and did tons better than I ever expected.  I ran a 7:21 mile and finished 5th in my age group, first in my division, which is where the points are.  After we were delayed for about an hour for weather we finally got underway.  The weather was thunder and lightening that moved into north OKC, but it never actually rained.  After the first lap and a half my lungs were on fire.  I have never experience that on a run before.  I think if it had actually rained it would have gotten whatever was in the air out of the air, but since it didn't it all managed to end up in my lungs.  The rest of the night and part of Saturday I sounded like I had asthma and a dry hacking cough.  Not pretty.  But for first place, I'll take it.

Saturday was the 55 meter dash, what a joke.  I am not even going to post my time here.  I managed to squeak in third place because a girl in my heat fell right before the finish line and I managed to get across before she did.  I felt bad that she fell, but there were people falling all over in those heats.  Glad I just made it through without any more scrapes and bruises.

Sunday morning was the 10k, and I was determined to do better than I did last year's 1:05 time.  I was hoping for better weather, and I knew that there would for sure be water stops so I was ready to go.  I think I went out a little fast, I checked my Garmin at the one mile mark and it said 7:39, WAY too fast.  I backed off a little at that point.  In the next mile I saw my friend Patti pass me.  I aspire to be a runner like her, so I kept her in my sights the first lap.  I can say that I was so glad she wasn't running the 10k and that I could hang a little behind her for the first half of my race.  She told me after that she saw me and wanted to get in front of me.  Nothing like a little friendly competition.

The weather was much better than last year, but it was pretty windy on the very flat and very boring loop, that I had to run twice.  The water stops were much appreciated, although they were handing out bottles of water.  Not very convenient if you are just wanting a small drink.  I felt like handing mine back to the volunteers to have them put my name on it so I could get it the next time around.  I hate that I wasted three bottles of water in one 6 mile race, but I sure didn't want to carry it with me.

It was a good race.  I finished in 54 minutes, I haven't seen my official time since it's not posted yet, but I took about eleven minutes off my time from last year.  I guess better conditions, no knee brace and being in much better shape makes a big difference.

My last event was the 400 meter leg of the women's 800 meter relay.  It was not pretty.  We were in lane 4 for the men's and women's relays and we finished 4th in both.  Most of the weekend we were a fourth place team.  We did win volleyball, we beat the Thunder team twice which was nice.  The weekend wrapped up with exhibition dodgeball.  Very entertaining.  Who knew that there were so many rules for dodgeball!  Turns out we have a dodgeball star in our accounting department. 

No working out yesterday, a hi low cardio class this morning, piyo in the morning and out to Draper to get some miles on my bike tomorrow night.  Here's hoping I don't have a repeat of last week's fall.  Really, if you are turning to the left you probably shouldn't unclip your right foot.  On the plus side I have some pretty awesome bruises and the fall wasn't as far as I imagined it would be.