Runnin' of the Green (Island) race report.

Saturday was my first race on the spring season, and my first since New Year's Day: The Runnin' of the Green (Island) 4 miles.

Last year, this race was terrific. The weather was perfect (I ran in a skirt and a tank top), a bunch of my friends ran it, and I ran a distance PR of 29:05.

This year, the race was still great but a few things were different. For starters, it was freezing and windy on Saturday. And I did not run a PR, which is totally OK since I wasn't going for one.

I was, however, going for a solid race. I wanted to run as steady as possible and not blow up in the last mile. Ideally, I wanted to finish in 30 minutes or faster.

For all of those loose goals, the race was a success!

I went to the race with Bridget, who was running it for the first time. We got there in plenty of time, picked up our packets and then raced back to the warmth of her car to figure out how many layers to wear. After re-layering, we made our way to the start and we were off.

With Bridget, before the start of the race. We were sporting our green!

I started in the middle, to make sure I didn't go out too fast and it ended up being a good plan. I pretty much passed people the whole race -- what a boost! I felt really good the whole way, with the exception of my breathing. Because it was so cold, my breath was more labored than is normal for a race and I couldn't breathe through my nose at all. Fortunately, it wasn't much of a problem.

At the end of the race, the route turns and you run a long straight-away where you can see the finish line from fairly far off. It is deceiving. On one hand, you're sooooooo close to the finish line so you want to run hard and be done. On the other hand, you're still far enough away that if you run too hard, you risk burning up before the finish line.

So, I pushed it a little when I saw the end and just tried to hold it. Once I was truly close, I pushed harder and finished strong.

As I said, not a PR, but well under my ideal of 30:00! A good race!

Here are my stats:

Official time: 29:37

Overall pace: 7:24
Mile 1: 7:23
Mile 2: 7:16
Mile 3: 7:19
Mile 4: 7:29
extra distance on Garmin: :10

Overall place: 159 out of 664
Gender place: 43 out of 353
Age group place (female, 40-49): 14 out of . . . hmm . . . not sure.

I'll take it.

Hope you all had a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by.