Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Chardonnay 10-Miler Race Recap

Happy Wednesday! I'm hosting the Workout Wednesday (WOW) linkup again, with fabulous co-hostesses Diatta Harris from Femme Fitale Fit Club, Sheila Simmons from The Frugal Exerciser, Natalie from Clean Eating Teen, and yours truly!

As promised, I'm sharing a recap of my first 10-miler, but first I wanted to give a huge shout out to my friend Lauren who ROCKED the Boston Marathon on Monday! It was her first marathon and she finished in 4:30:46! What a rock-star!

(Image Source)
My race was much less impressive but I'm still pretty proud of myself. Here's how it went down. 

The Race

Saturday's race was the Santa Barbara Chardonnay 10-Miler. It's apparently one of the oldest races in the area and the course is along the beautiful Santa Barbara waterfront.

I picked up my packet the night before so race day went pretty smoothly. Race-day packet pickup lines were long but looked organized, there was plenty of Gatorade, water, GU and even coffee available. The only downside was the incredibly long line bathroom line, although to be fair I later heard there were more bathrooms a little farther away.


I thought the long bathroom and packet lines might delay the start, but the organizers managed to get everyone to the line just before 8:00. It was a fairly small race, with less than 400 runners, so there weren't corals or even designated runner, jogger, walker divisions. I lined up kind of a little front of center and, after a super-casual "on your mark get set go", we were off at about at 8:02! 

The hardest part of this race was getting passed SO MUCH. One of my race goals was to go slow to avoid burning out early. But it was really hard to maintain my pace when EVERYONE was running faster than me. Seriously, I turned around once to make sure I wasn't actually THE LAST ONE. There was a particular low point around mile 4 where a 65+ BAMF lady with a full head of silver hair breezed by me. I just had to tell myself to let it go, but boy was it hard on my competitive spirit.

I definitely started to feel my legs by mile 5, and all the getting passed was a little discouraging. I also never managed to find someone running at my pace I could try to stick with. But MapMyRun kept telling me I was running around my 11 min mile A goal pace and the gorgeous views kept me going.    


I didn't end up taking a ton of pictures, because once I stopped to walk it was really painful to start running again. So except for a brief walk to grab some water from the mile 3,5,7 and 9 stations and eat my Honey Stinger energy chews and waffle, I mostly at least maintained a slow jog.

A little before mile 8, we joined the regular beach bike/jogging path, which was open to joggers, walkers, and cyclists. I didn't feel like I was in danger of getting hit but I did have to weave around a bit, which was challenging. My legs were pretty dead by this point, but this was also when I finally stopped getting passed and even passed a couple people!

Around this time, I also saw a woman a little ahead of me. I picked up my speed when I hit mile 9 and started to gain on her. Then, as soon as I heard my phone say I only had a quarter mile left, I decided I was going to beat her. I thought "You may not know it, but we're racing now" and took off. I pulled ahead of her but wasn't sure how close she was so I kept pushing. Then I saw my awesome coworker Jill waving that pink sign, Maureen cheering, and my housemate Michelle taking pictures and SPRINTED to the finish line.


The Results

I beat my A goal of finishing in 1:50:00 with a chip time of 1:47:31! That's a 10:45 min mile!! So I know people run marathons (a lot) faster than that, but it's much faster than any of my long training runs. Oh and don't worry about my head getting too big. Coming in 321/377 will keep me plenty humble. Over half the race finished in under 9 minutes! No wonder I kept getting passed!


I still feel a huge sense of accomplishment for running my first 10-miler on 4 weeks of training much faster than I thought I could, and being fit enough to sprint at the end (and go out dancing that night ;) ). Plus I made it to the wine tasting, which was my most important goal of all!


Now on to the party!


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23 comments:

  1. That's such a great accomplishment!! :D
    I'd love to start running, it's definitely something I want to try at some point, but I don't know if I'd be much good haha!
    I can't believe how big the queue for the toilet was! Torture haha.

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    1. Thanks so much Louise! I'm not very good at running. If I can do it, you definitely can too!

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  2. Yay congratulations! That course looks BEAUTIFUL! and you didn't get lost this time..? haha (:

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    1. Haha thanks! Yea I'm surprised I didn't get lost too. It was touch and go at one point :)

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  3. You did awesome!! What a fast race that was...was it fairly flat? Maybe a lot of people were using it to try and get a good time for corral placement in other races?? Who knows! What you do know though is that you beat your goal time and were under your projected mileage pace...so awesome and such a scenic course! #wowlinkup

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    1. Thanks Jayne! It was definitely pretty flat, although there were a few hills. Definitely pretty proud of myself :)

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  4. Your friend is definitely a ROCK STAR and the fact you were able to run 10 miles on 4 weeks of training is phenomenal!!!!!! You must bottle that and sell it. I would be first in line. :-) #wowlinkup

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    1. Thanks so much Diatta! And thanks for hosting as always!

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  5. Wooo hoo!! Congrats to you and your friend!! The course looked beautiful. I totally laughed at this part, " You may not know it, but we're racing now" and took off ' I do the same thing hehe. How was the wine?

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    1. Thanks Jenny! I love secretly racing people lol. The wine was ok, there were a couple good wineries but not a ton of wine. Probably a good thing though ;)

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  6. This looks like a great race! Congrats on beating your goal time :)

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  7. Wow!! Great job on the race!! It looks like it was a beautiful course :)

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    1. Thanks! It was super pretty. One of the best things about running in Santa Barbara :)

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  8. UGH! I couldn't agree more, once you stop running, it's SO SO OS hard to start again!!!! Nice work on your race though, now it's time for ANOTHER ;)

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    1. Haha not sure when the next race will be. Starting to like racing but it's not an exclusive relationship. I think we might need to see other people :)

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  9. The best thing about this post: I thought "You may not know it, but we're racing now" and took off. lol. this is so me! competitiveness at its best. And congrats to your friend on the Boston Marathon! That is rockstar right there!

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  10. Hi, Amanda. I hope your week is going well! I just wanted to let you know that I nominated you for a Liebster Award on my blog at http://runningandenjoying.blogspot.com/2014/04/liebster-award.html.

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    1. Thanks! OMG I was totally going to nominate you too in tomorrow'spost, but you beat me to it :)

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  11. Hi Amanda,
    Thank you for hopping by UrbanNaturale and congratulations on your first 10 miler. You are such a fitness inspiration. All the best, Deborah

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    1. Thanks so much Deborah! And thanks for joining in the #wowlinkup!

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  12. Congrats on your 10 mile race and it was a beautiful scenic run. How long have you been running? Visiting from the #wowlinkup.

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    1. Thanks so much Sheila! I guess I've been trying to run consistently for about 6 months now. My first 5K was in October, and I've only done 2 total 5Ks and a 10-miler, so I definitely don't have a ton of experience.

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