It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!

Today was the Great Pumpkin 5K Fun Run in downtown Houston & it was definitely a great day for a race. The temperatures started out in the mid 40's & only got up to about the high 50's by the end of the race. PERFECT!!

Originally I was going to run to the starting line, but I had to drop off the coolers & first aid kit to the coaches at TNT & that had me running late, so I did a loop (3 miles) at Memorial Park first & then drove downtown for the race. My time at Memorial was about 50 minutes & I did nothing but walk. I was with a fellow teammate & we chatted the whole time, so I didn't check my watch at all. The cold air definitely had me jazzed & that 3 mile warm-up was just what I needed to get ready for the race.

I got downtown, picked up my timing chip, & made my way to the start. Since it's Halloween weekend there were all sorts of people dressed up, from people with head-bands with horns/spiders/ghosts/witches, etc, to 4 guys dressed as giant bananas. It was pretty amusing.

Since I'd done 3 miles of walking already, I decided to start out the race running, so I wasn't too far back at the starting line so when the "gun" went off. I ran for the 1st 3 minutes & felt great! Then I went into my 3:1 walk/run & kept it up the whole race. I never felt like I was ever slowing down. In fact, I felt like I just kept getting faster. I completely missed the 1st mile marker so I have no idea what my splits were, but when I got to mile 2, I'd been going for 30 minutes. NICE! After that I said to myself "if I can finish this race in under 47 minutes, I will be SO happy!" Since it was so cool out, I wasn't feeling the need for more water, so I passed up the water station & kept on running. I was feeling great & actually passed people! (Woo!)

I saw downtown closing in faster & faster & knew I was almost done. I refused to look at my watch, but felt like I was still on pace. I knew the last section of the race went off to an on-ramp, but didn't realize that it was all uphill until I was right on it. It was pretty damn steep & I just didn't have it in me to run up it. It started having flashbacks to Insult Hill in the Alaska Marathon. Thankfully it leveled out just before the finish line. That's when I saw the clock... 46:25. "I can make it!" I started to run again. I started to pass a woman & she said "I'll race you to the finish line!" "Deal!" And with that, we both kicked it into overdrive & crossed together. My final time?

46:57

A personal best! I was SO excited! I kept a steady pace of about 15 mins/mile. Woo-hoo!!!

I'm really hoping I can keep this up for the 1/2 marathon in 2 weeks. I'll actually be happy if I can average about 17 mins/mile for that race, but my real goal is to finish the 1/2 in less than 4 hours. I'm pretty damn sure I can do that. And if I can do that, then my next goal is to finish the Houston 1/2 even faster. I figure with the 2 extra months of training, that shouldn't be a problem.

Today is a good day. :)