Another race is in the books! Not a PR but surprisingly it was another 10k that I ended up really enjoying 
To recap, let’s go back to Friday night…
Sister and I drove up to Green Bay on Friday night for packet pickup. We packed a little pasta salad to eat in the car on the way up and it turned out to be very yummy!
Rice pasta, kale, carrots, ham, dill havarti, greek dressing and olives.
The race expo for this is outside in a park and this weekend it was a lovely evening! The expo is pretty small but we both wanted to avoid buying anything so that was probably a good thing 
Even though there are 18,000 runners, the expo process always goes very smoothly. We got in and out in about 10 minutes!
After pickup, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some snacks and breakfast food for tomorrow morning and then headed to the hotel. Our normal GB hotel was doing a stupid 2 night minimum this weekend so we had to try another one. Let’s just say I picked an old one… Oops! But it was clean which is my cut off for bailing on hotel rooms.
We got checked in and attempted to get some internet but failed miserably. We had a little snack…
Obsessed with these animal crackers and PB&co. peanut butters! OH yum!
and then headed to bed. With no internet, we couldn’t watch our Netflix options so we ended up watching the end of RV to fall asleep. Surprisingly, I ended up sleeping until 10 minutes before my alarm went off. Score!
Coffee drinking, breakfast, bib pinning and water drinking occurred. (Ps did I mention it managed to be the 2nd 90 day of the year on Saturday? The first being my marathon fail day… ) At about 7:10 we headed for the shuttles about 1 mile from our hotel. The shuttles took longer than I remembered but I think that was due to some construction maybe? We ended up at the start line area at about 7:40. We tried waiting for the Porto potties right when we got there but the line was NOT moving so we walked to the start corrals and found tons more! Good idea to move on.
We got to our corrals about 5 minutes before we started moving. Much failed self portraiture occurred
At about 8:10, I made it across the start line and I was off! I tried to keep a comfortable yet relatively fast pace the whole time and managed this until about mile 4 when I got super hot… This course is a really nice one though. Pretty flat with a few slight hills but nothing compared to Nashville! It’s amazing how much tolerance I’ve built up to hill running by actually running on hills. Duh! They are actually not that bad
At mile 4 was when I started to have to walk break. It’s amazing how much walking helps cool you down though! The last mile was hard but I finished it strong! I was so proud of the fact I didn’t woose out on this race. I’ve been in a bad cycle of mentally messing up on my running game so this race really helped set me up for a much better experience.
I went into this race with zero expectations and could actually have fun then! I ended up finishing in 57:24. Last year I finished in 57:26. Ha! And last year it was about 20+ degrees cooler. Aka perfect running weather so I guess I was a lot stronger this year to be able to keep the same pace in the heat. It’s also interesting that the same time this year placed me 1500 runners higher than last year out of 15,000 finishers. Apparently my heat running training paid off some anyways!
On a total side note, when is it irresponsible to let little kids run 6 miles? It was SO hot yesterday and I saw so many parents keeping pace and kids trailing behind them running….like 5-6 year olds… It just seemed dangerous to me!? How do kids know when they are overheating? Also they frantically dart to every sprinkler right in front of people without looking for others. It was a near miss with at least 5 small humans and me running them over. I guess I just don’t get it…
All done! I hate how those banks look on my head though… dew rag much?!
Anyways, after the race I tried to make my way to the finish line to spot sister. Of course I missed her again. I have zero skills for spotting her in a crowd! We continued on our way to get out and found some waters (not cold btw, blech) and made our way to the shuttles back to our car.
All in all, it was a really nice race. I feel like I ran as fast as I could in those conditions and was mentally stronger than I have been lately. It was incredibly hot (86 when we finished) but I was smart and didn’t push too hard. I finished by sprinting over the finish and passed a bunch of people in the end. I love that so much! Call me a meanie I know I piss people off but it’s not my fault they are too worn out to finish strong!
Now… Two weeks and I have to run that distance + 20 miles. Now that’s something to freak about!
