Friday, September 22, 2006

NDU 5K: "To Begin Again"

In essense, I am starting from scratch. Today was my first timed running road race since I finished my year of chemo/cancer treatment so this is the "Post-Cancer Holly" baseline from which all times will be compared in my running through the end of 2006.

Technically, I could call this a post-cancer PR (personal record) but I have run faster in the past so I won't call this a PR but I will call it a good start.


Not only did I get to run this race BUT I also got to design the T-Shirt! (see image above) Not too bad a deal!

The course is FLAT and started at 12:30PM. We run on the National Defense University campus which is on Fort McNair in Washington, DC and runs parallel with Haines Point/West Potomac Park for those of you who have run a race here in the DC area. I ran along the same course as President Bush did during the Presidential Fitness Challenge 3-Mile Run in June 2002.


George ran this course in 20:29.

Today's overall winner ran the course in 17:48.

It is the same extact terrain as the Navy 5 Miler this weekend (in fact that race start is less than 3 miles away) so it was a good test of the pace strategy that I plan to use.

The weather was perfect! 67 and a cool breeze coming off the water.

I went out faster than I wanted to but it is hard not to do that in this race. I tried to ignore those around me and stick to my 4/1 RUN/WALK intervals. My goal anything smaller than 12:30 minute miles.

Mile 1: 11:08
(that includes walk breaks! NIce to know that I can run sub 11:00 miles still)
Mile 2: 11:52
(Now that is what I was looking for...)
Mile 3: 12:36
(OOPS! I guess that was the sub 11:00 mile catching up with me)

TOTAL CLOCK TIME: 36:40

I TAKE IT! So my average pace was somewhere around 11:50 - not such a bad place to start from! I will take it.

Now onto this weekend Navy 5 Miler. I have got nothing to loose in this race so my goal is to stick close with my friend Keri and see how far I can go before I blow up using 4/1 RUN/Walk. Now that I know what kind of pace I am doing, I'd like to finish the Navy 5 Miler in 60:00 or less.

It's good to have a goal! Live STRONG!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool!!! Did W really run in 20 minutes? Very impresive.

Dr. Iron TriFeist :) said...

How awesome for you. An 11:50 everage is very respectable. Greata job! That 5 miler will be great.

Nancy Toby said...

You rocked, Holly! And the shirt design looks awesome!!

It's totally correct to start keeping PRs all over again, with no apology to anyone. I did that after my girls were born because I felt like I was coming back from scratch. You can too!!

*jeanne* said...

Cool post!
Cool design for the shirt!
Cool Presidential running pic!
Cool Phoenix-y rising again to start counting PRs from here on!
Have a TERRIFIC Navy Birthday 5-Miler! :-)