Annalee's Memorial 10K Race Report

On Saturday August 10th, I ran the Annalee's Memorial 10K Run and it was such a great race. The race remembers Annalee Ventling who was a runner who died from cancer in February 1997, at only age 27. The entry fee is donated to the Southern Hills Right To Life so it's also for a great cause. The race was ran in Custer, which is almost 2 hours away and we needed to sign up by 7am so Chris, the kids, and I were out the door by 5am. We threw the kids in the car in their jammies, popped a movie in for them and we were off in the pouring rain. And when I say pouring, I mean it. We could barely see in front of us and had to go extremely slow as it was still dark too. The rain let up the closer we got to Custer and it was actually a pretty cold morning for a summer day in August. But I knew as soon as we started running, we would warm up quickly. I saw my friend, Heather, who I met via sparkpeople.com, although we tell people we met on match.com :) and we chatted with some of the other runners as we got ready to get on the bus to take us to the starting line. We got onto the bus at 730 and it took us to Crazy Horse, which is always cool to see, but we were mostly trying to warm up and get ready to run. The whole race was run on the Mickelson Trail which is SO nice compared to running on the road. It's nice on your knees too! :) I really wanted to PR on this race because I knew it might be my only chance this year and I hadn't gotten a PR this year yet. My previous PR in the 10K was set last September with a time of 59:59. The course was on the trail AND downhill AND the weather was perfect, clear and cool, with some sun along the way, so everything pointed to a PR for me. At 8am, we were off and I started off running with a 13 year old runner, Maddy, who is at all of the races and I have known her for a couple of years now. She is awesome as she also runs half marathons at 13 years old! I was NOT running half marathons at that age; I was more interested in boys! :) Anyway, her and her dad are a great team and I love seeing them at the races because they are very inspirational. So, Maddy and I were running at a pretty good pace, I thought, but I didn't dare look down to see until I heard the Garmin beep that we were done with the first mile. I look down and we had run that mile in 9:08!!!! In order to beat my PR, I needed to average 9:40 miles so I was sittin' pretty at this point. But I had to remember that I had 5.2 miles to go! Maddy and I ran the next 2 miles together and chatted some but mostly just focused on running. Both of those miles were in the 9:20s, but I was just fine with that. At the halfway point, there was a water station so I grabbed a cup and kept on running. My average pace at this point was 9:16 so I was still good to go. Maddy stopped at the water station for a break so now I was on my own. There were only 50-60 runners so not very much company along the way. Heather was ahead of me so my goal now was to keep her in my sights for as long as I could. After the 4th mile, I could feel myself slowing down a bit, but I was still on track to get my PR so I kept going. My 4th mile was 9:35 so I was getting close to the slowest my miles could be, but I had run the other ones fast enough to make up for it. By mile 5, I was really tired, but I met up with Maddy's dad, Bob, and ran alongside him for a while and the time went by faster that way. The last half a mile were really tough for me and I had to slow down quite a bit, but then I saw the finish line and saw Chris and the kids, and they were both yelling "Go Mommy Go!" so I pushed down and finished strong with a time of 58:51!!! I had beat my previous PR by a whole minute and 8 seconds!!!! I would have been happy beating it by just 8 seconds! I was really happy and couldn't believe it as I had not gotten a PR in any race this whole year. Finally in August and in my 13th race of the year, I do it! Heather ran a great race and finished in 56:26 and my new friend, Brenna, (who I met on the bus on the way up to the CASA half marathon a couple of weeks ago) finished in 53 something! Bob finished just in front of me and his daughter, Maddy, finished in 1:05. So, a great race and great times all around. This will definitely be a race that I do in the future. Thanks to Heather for telling me about it!!! It was a such a fun morning!