Bonus Resolution 4 - Finish 12 Races in a Year - Halfway There!

As I eluded to in my last blog about running, I still want to blog about the rest of the races I compete in throughout the year even though I am done with the Fargo Marathon and #30daysofrunning. At the rate I am going I would like to compete for an average of one race a month, and right now I am halfway there with six races in the books, and I am signed up for two, with a possible third in September. I will get to those in a moment, but I will first recap the last race that transpired since my last running blog and that was the Firecracker 10k in Grand Forks on Independence Day.

I think this is easily the worst prepared I went into a race yet. The race was at 8am, and I worked the night before and got off work 45 minutes before the race. On top of that, I had a horrible time trying to get some sleep the day before and only got about four hours of sleep. So to recap I went into the race being up already for about 16 hours off four hours of sleep. At least I had a couple friends I started running the race with. I met up with my buddies and old coworkers Sean and Adam and we agreed to start off the race together, and not to slow down for each other and that we would eventually all meet up at the finish line.

I started off strong and kept up with Adam for the first mile before he pulled ahead of me and took off. A little while later Sean caught up with me and after about another mile he pulled ahead of me. I was definitely feeling the effects of going into a race right after work and on very little sleep. I kept seeing both of them get farther in the distance, but I did not let it get me down and I still kept on trucking and went nonstop. For the last third mile I finally got a last surge of energy and went into an all out sprint and managed to pass a couple people in the last minute. 92 people raced in the 10k and Adam finished the best of the three of us and finished 19th overall with a time of 47:54. Sean finished 37th with a time of 51:45. I finished 42nd with a time of 53:13.

I had a feeling I was not going to come close to record 50 minute PR, but I guess it could have went a lot worse. It did feel good to run against a couple of friends to get those competitive juices flowing and that definitely helped me get through the race. For next races coming up on the horizon, I am signed up the Grand Forks Half Marathon towards the end of September, and a 5k obstacle mud run in Grand Forks in early September. I plan on really stepping up my cross training and doing more biking and swimming in preparation for the mud run, which is running in the mud for 5km with 20 obstacles interspersed throughout. Not all the obstacles have been revealed yet, but we can skip them if we so desire. One of them is swimming across the Red River so that should definitely be interesting. I told Sean I would run that with him since he ran the Firecracker race with me.

There is another race a couple days before the mud run in Fargo which is another theme to it in the form of a late night glow in the dark electric run. Do not know if I will do it for sure yet or not, but I hope I can compete in it with a couple of friends. They also just announced the popular Color Run is coming to Grand Forks in September, so who knows I may just end up doing four runs in September. So now I will have a list of all the races and times I have finished so far this year going by distance of race.

5K

UND Autism 5k - 4/20/13 - 26:22 - 23rd out of 74

10k

Hillsboro Run - 6/13/13 - 50:17 - 23rd out of 55
Dewey Memorial - 6/1/13 - 50:21 - 15th out of 56
Firecracker - 7/4/13 - 53:13 - 42nd out of 92
Frozen Feat - 2/16/13 - 53:57 - 50th out of 108

Half Marathon

Fargo - 5/18/13 - 2:02:48 - 2062nd out of 5526