Run Your Heart Out 5K and Bull Run Run!!!!

So boring stuff first, early in February I ran Run Your Heart Out 5K as part of marathon training.  It was cold, and I hadn't really been doing any speedwork so I really didn't plan on trying to PR.  That course isn't great for PR'ing anyway so I figured I would just run it as a nice tempo run.  JD and I did 2 miles of warm up on the track (one of the reasons that I love races that start at South Lakes).  It was time to get the race going.  I settled into a pretty comfortable pace around 8:30 once I got out of the mess at the beginning.  Potomac River Running had done a great job by trying to set up pace groups so that you didn't get stuck on the narrow trail behind slower runners.  However, lots of people apparently have no clue how to line up correctly.  I lined up at the back of the 8-9 minute pace group, and I was passing people who started in the group in front of me within the first half mile. 

Starting on the track...see how I'm now at the front of the pack before we even got off the track.

I ran a pretty comfortable race and averaged 8:23 pace for a finish of 26:04.  That was good enough for 7/91 in the 40-45 age group (yes, it was my first race as an official master's runner!).  I was pretty happy with that finish since I was basically doing a tempo workout and not racing.

Cool race swag...tech t, pin, and lanyard.

Coming up that last hill

Super warm in my runprettyfar run scarf!

Now onto more exciting things!  My big goal of the year was to run a 50 miler.  I really wanted Bull Run Run to be my first, but it's so hard to get in.  I entered the lottery, and I got in!

So now I'm training hard to get there and earn that finish.  I signed on with Vo2Max (Sage Canady and Sandi Nypaver) for coaching and a training plan.  So far it is going really well.  It's challenging, and I've been doing a lot of long runs in the cold weather, but I am really starting to see improvement.