Wow!! I did it, and I survived! And did even better than I hoped!

I did my long-scheduled women's 8K run on the beach (the Diva on the Run 8K in Vancouver, BC) today. This is my last race of the season, I was doing it for the third time and I decided I would try to go really hard. My last time was 38:49 and I was now wanting to touch 36 minutes. After my half-marathon a month ago I started doing a lot of speedwork and got really scared because it seemed quite hard to run that fast for so long. About two weeks ago I had a really good hill reps session which lifted my spirit... and hurt my left big toe tendon. So I had cut down training dramatically to avoid aggravating it, and this morning as I warmed up I was really scared because my body just didn't remember what it meant to go fast.

This is a small race and the local fast runners don't really show up. According to my study of previous years' results, a 36-min time would make me between 10th and 15th overall.

Despite my fears, after kissing my kind husband-turned-into-warm-clothes-carrying-assistant, I headed to the very front, near the start line. Who was standing on my right? Suzanne Evans, who won the Victoria marathon the last three years and was just featured on the cover of a local magazine. She asked me if we knew each other because I looked familiar. "I'm afraid no, of course I recognize you but I don't think we've met." I was more and more scared, and then the woman who won the Divas' race the last three years arrived, too, and started chatting with Evans. What was I doing there? Somehow there was a gun shot and we took off.

The start of the course had lots of twists and turns - its' a beach-trail run - and I was sixth in line. But I was too out of breath to be scared by then. The two leaders took off and were out of sight after only 1 km (they finished about 5 minutes before me!). And there I was, running a 4 minute kilometer! I stuck a few meters behind another woman and stayed there for the next four km. Thankfully she slowed down a bit and I could at last control my breathing. Woman #7 was not far behind and when we turned a corner I realized that the rest of the pack was far behind.

At the 5 km mark, I could feel #5 runner slow down and we were both passed by #7. I knew I had enough in me to press a little harder so I passed #5 so I could remain in 6th position. At the 6 km sign there was a 180 degrees turn. I though I'd have a tail wind at last but NO! I turned into a head wind. Ouch! I slowed down significantly for the last two km, but the other woman never caught up.

Near the end, I just wanted to stop and puke. But then I saw a really big man that I always see walking on the beach with a coach. A month ago, he could barely walk and his breathing was really laboured. Two weeks ago he was walking with more energy. Today when I saw him he was walking AND talking and looking happy. That sort of gave me a big kick and I decided to throw whatever spare change I had left and just keep going.

I happily crossed the finish line at 35m13s, thus 45 seconds faster than the best time I expected. I was really happy (while trying not to throw up on the guy that clipped of my timing chip). I was also coughing for the next hour or so!! And I got a really nice SportyJewels pendant to go with my age group 2nd place! It was good to meet the other women at the finish and to congratulate each other. The great thing about this run is that most people stick around to cheer for the last Diva coming in, even if that means waiting for almost an hour in the cold.

Lessons learned:
- Races are really a mental thing. There's NO WAY I could run this fast while training.
- Small races are cool because they give you a chance - but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't even try to place in bigger events.
- Starting faster than planned is not necessarily a bad thing if it can be kept under control: it allowed me to dig a comfortable gap between myself and other runners while my adrenalin was at its highest; accelerating later would not necessarily have been possible.

And now on to cycling!!!!! I will mostly be off this thread until September, but I will keep lurking. Thanks for letting me tell the story. And here is the "running spirit" I now have around my neck: