My first in-person race of 2020!
While it wasn’t quite the same racing as pre-pandemic years, it was still fun together to get together with a smaller group of people and run a race!
There were quite a few differences at this race including: our temperature was taken before we entered the start corral, small waves of runners started every three minutes, there were signs around the area reminding people to social distance, and there were no awards ceremony or post-race party. But despite these new protocols, we had our first race in Anchorage in 2020!
I was excited to race in-person again. It felt like forever since I ran the New York City Marathon in November of 2018, which is the last time I raced-raced prior to getting pregnant and being pregnant for the majority of 2019.
I laid out my clothes the night before the race like a giddy school-girl excited but nervous for her first day back at it! I ended up cropping the race tee they gave us as our finisher’s shirt, but don’t look at the terrible stitching I did as I was sewing like a mad-woman at 10p.m. the night before the race.
Overall, I had a decent race. I was hoping for a pace right around 6:20, but I was a little slower at a 6:31 average pace. I ran a pretty steady race the whole time as my splits at the half-way mark was 6:28.
The weather was perfect, there were a few people out cheering, and I had my friend and coworker, Klaire, to push me during the first half, but I can tell I’m not as fit as I could have been since my Achilles injury set me back a couple months in my training. HOWEVER, I will take this slightly sub-par performance any day over being injured!
These two cheerleaders are so good to see at the end of my race.
I thought the race directors did a really good job of safely putting on the race in-person despite a pandemic.
There were a lot of signs around the start/finish area reminding people to keep their distance. Those not running were encouraged to wear masks. There were plastic screens up around the food and when picking up your bib/shirt for the race.
The start was also unique in that we had our temperature taken before entering the start corral. Once in the corral, there were white dots indicating where to stand in order to social distance from one another, which I thought was an ingenious idea. Small waves of no more than 20 people started every three minutes, and the race was capped at 200 people total.
It wasn’t hard to social distance during the run since there were so few people starting together and everyone quickly settled into their own pace shortly afterwards.
I am really glad I was able to run a race in-person. It renewed that spark for my competitive spirit–although I love the process just as much, so I am thoroughly enjoying training and summer running even if there aren’t many races to run.
HERE is the newspaper article where they interviewed me about the race and featured a picture of me and Klaire during the race.
Okay, this is finally going up a week after the race! (You know I’m extremely busy and behind my work when I get a race recap posted so late.) My aunt was in town for a week and then my parents came into town a few days after that, so it has been a bit of a whirlwind second half of this month.
But all is good! I still have a few other blog posts I need to finish up, so I’ll be back with some more updates soon!
