8 Miles On The 4th

Happy (late) 4th of July! I don't know about anyone else but it is hot, hot, HOT here in NY. It was almost 80 degrees by the time I was done running. I ran an 8 miler in Mahopac yesterday and saying that it was a death march would be pretty accurate. That being said, this is a great race. It's the Putnam County Classic 8 miler and they have it every July 4th. It's put on by the Taconic Road Runners Club, a great local running club in my area. Entry was $20 and you got a nice blue tech shirt and lots of drinks, bagels, and watermelon at the finish. The course is a lovely but HILLY 8 miles around lake Mahopac and the surrounding neighborhood. If you live around here, I would definitely recommend trying it out. I am still **pretty** new to this long distance thing-read: anything longer than a 10k- but was pretty confidant in my abilities to run solid 9s the whole way.  Hahahahaha. Well my first mile was a 7:30. It was all downhill and the ladies who said they were going to run 9s as well were not running 9s. I looked down at my Garmin and spazzed out.

ermagerd guys! This is so fun! Wait, you're telling me I have 7 uphill miles to go???

Also, this was the only downhill mile the entire race, the other 7 miles were huge rolling hills. In the end, I was not prepared for hills this steep at those temperatures. My pace slowed to a 10 minute pace and I even had a 10:30 pace at mile 6- which was almost all uphill. I got to that place where I was simply trying to finish. Thankfully, this race had lots of people out cheering and there were lots of runners so I had lots of people to gripe with when we were tackling the hills :) The last 300 meters were on the track of Mahopac High School. When I hit the 100 meter straightway, I gave it all I had, mainly because I wanted to stop running.

At least the dude behind me looks tired, too.

Return of the pain face. 

Actually looking kind of bada$$ here, if I do say so myself. But if we're being honest, this is more my determined-to make-it-50-more-meters-so-I-can-stop-this-crazy-running-thing face.

But I finished in 1:21:07. This is not a great time by any means but I'm still proud of myself because I kept going. There were times during this race where I was freaking out. My body isn't used to this type of abuse and I was really in pain for a lot of it. I really struggle with the mental aspect of running. Athletes who can push themselves through huge amounts of pain during a race, I don't know how they do that because it takes so much mental strength to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. But I never gave up even though I wanted to. So for that, I am very proud.

VCTC-ers victory jump!

 The rest of my 4th of July was spent watching Lost Girl (basically the less good version of Buffy, but I'm sticking with it) and hanging out with some good friends on Lake Peekskill. Hope everyone had a great day!

Perfect way to finish of the day.