Phew! Three races in three weeks! Not how I usually do things, but when your favorite races happen that close together, you take advantage of it before you move and have to drive much further than a mere 10-15 minutes to get to the start of a race.
This race recap is coming almost a month late, but that’s life right now while we are in the process of moving. But it finally made it up here on the blog. (Side note: moving is going well. Our garage sale was successful–we got rid of a lot of stuff, made some money, and then donated the rest of our things. Now I just need to purge a few more things, and then start the packing process!)
As for the race, the Alaska Run for Women is a charity race for breast cancer. It is a huge race that draws a lot of people–competitive runners, run/walkers, and walkers in the “party wave.” The “elite wave” starts first, and this year the group wasn’t too big. You had to have an average pace of 7:07 min/mile from the 2019 race, which was the last time the race was run in-person. I ran the 2019 race 20 weeks pregnant with Bjorn at a pace of 6:54, so I was surprised I still qualified for the elite wave. (I could have petitioned my way in if the qualifying time had been faster than my 2019 time.)
Going into the race, I wasn’t really sure what my body was going to be capable of after two other hard races the two weekends before. I didn’t feel great warming-up, but my main goal was a PR for the day, and I thought I could still pull that off since my previous PR was at this race 7 years ago at 7 months postpartum with Cullen and done really more as a workout. My previous PR pace was 6:28 minutes/mile, so I had that on my mind going into the race.
The race started nearly 30 minutes late due to them trying to secure an intersection for the race, which was kind of annoying because I always time my warm-up to end and for me to be ready to start racing at a certain time. But I did my best to stay warm and relaxed while waiting.
When the gun finally went off, I was a little slow off the start line after just standing around for so long, but luckily I got into a groove quickly and settled into my pace. Surprisingly my legs felt okay racing, and I am glad this race was the shortest of the three races I did.
I did my best to maintain a consistent effort throughout the race especially when we got back into the woods and there weren’t as many people cheering. There was a solid group of about five of us running together for the first couple of miles before my friend, Ashlee, and I pulled ahead and ran nearly the rest of the way together.
My splits from my watch:
Mile 1 – 6:07
Mile 2 – 6:17
Mile 3 – 6:18
Mile 4 – 6:07
0.9 – 6:15 pace
My watch had the distance of the race being 4.93, so a tad short of 5 miles.
I was happy to place 4th for the women, as this is a really competitive race and draws Olympic skiers (one who won the race) and many other fast women from around the area.
After the race, I did a nice easy cool-down with a couple of other friends, and then waited around (once again for quite some time) until the awards ceremony where they recognize the top 15 women. This year’s prizes included a potted tree, homemade clay pitcher, and a local skin care product.
All-in-all, I’m happy that all three of the races went well for me, and I ran two new PRs and the third race was only a few seconds off my PR. I have one more race (Skinny Raven Half) before I fly and move out of Alaska the very next day!
