Shamrock Shuffle 2017

Somehow this brutal course has become one of my favorite races to run not sure why perhaps I like the torture challenge!  St. Patrick's Day has always been one of my favorite holidays to celebrate, not sure why maybe because my favorite color is green but instead of drinking green beer to celebrate like in college now I go run a race.  Before the race I decided I actually wanted to set a time goal, ahhh scary I never do this I feel like I just set myself up for failure, but I wanted to keep challenging myself.  For some reason lately I've been able to push my own limits and I keep hitting times I didn't think were possible.  The weird part is I'm the heaviest I've been in a long time!  I'm talking like since I was pregnant I've never been this heavy.  I don't even know how it happened.  It really snuck up on me this off season.  I only noticed now that I'm trying to get ready for tri season.  I went back to look at my time from last year and couldn't find it so I looked up my time from the year before which was 59 min.  So I decided I wanted to try for 9 min. miles which would have put me around 56 mins.  Turns out I had decided to switch from the 10k to the 10 miler last year last minute and that's why I couldn't find my time.  It's crazy to me that I do enough running/tris that I forget what and how many races I've done each year!

So going into it I thought I was confident since I've been running faster lately. But then the day before I went skiing with my son in Santa Fe for the last hoorah of the season.  We actually went to the top for the first time but that meant I was super tired by the end of the day.  My

legs were super soar and I wore compression socks that night to try and help.  I was also very dehydrated and had a horrible headache.  Not to mention my hamstring on my left leg has been yelling at me every time I run for the last two weeks and it was grumbling again on race day.  So race morning I decided I'd go ahead and run in my compression socks and just hope for the best!  I mean at leas they fit the theme, rainbow and all.  :-)  I still wanted to go for it.  I ended up with a time of 57:20 which I was super happy with even though I fell a little short of my 9 min/mi goal I know I left it all out there.  One friend even said well you looked like you had skied all day yesterday! Yes, I was tired but I really pushed myself.  Somehow this time was good enough to get me 2nd AG this year.

My son did the 1k again and this was the first year he seemed to know what was going on and was excited for it!  It helped that he had some friends out there with him.  This time the crowd and the start horn didn't scare him and he took off as fast as he could.  We hit the little hill and he started walking and wanted to quit.  But then I reminded him that if he crossed the finish line he'd get a shiny medal.  So he kept going.  He did the whole thing and I didn't have to carry him at all like in past years.  I was super proud of him and we both left with medals! ;-)  Hopefully a family tradition we can continue for years to come.  It was great seeing friends and a beautiful day for a race and to have hills for breakfast!