This One Was A Doozie

This morning I ran the Shamrock Shuffle 8K. I've never seen such a crazy course. Check this out. Hahaha. Runkeeper strikes again! According to Runkeeper, my 8K was 8.55 miles and I paced at 6:40. I'll take it. It sounds (and looks) pretty believable, right?

In actuality, THIS was the race course. You might be able to see the resemblance. Race Report
Time:56:55   Distance:8K   Pace:11:27

Started off the morning hanging out with Patti, my sister, Jean, and 40,000 of our closest running buddies, waiting to start the 2010 Shamrock Shuffle. It took 33 minutes to cross the start line, and our first mile was about 12:00. Sure, we could have tried to haul through the crowd weaving and zig-zagging, but is it worth it?

The weather was slightly better than I expected. It was cold, but the snow/rain combo stopped prior to us arriving downtown. It was pretty cold hanging out for 33 minutes trying to start, and pretty cold running slow during mile 1, but the following miles we warmed up. The whole race was actually pretty nice. They changed the route this year and I found myself really enjoying it. In addition, we all took it easy and had fun (versus many of you that take these things a bit more seriously than I do) and finished feeling pretty great. Then, we got stuck in a heard of runners trying to get out after the finish.

Despite the fact that we were no where near the last to finish, they were out of bananas. They were also out of some sort of Nabisco 100 Calorie packs. All they had were potato chips. Of course, I got all steamed up that the race organizers felt it was appropriate to give runners potato chips as a post-race snack. Then I ate a whole bag. We froze our butts off on the way to the car and packed it up to head home.

It wasnt my fastest race, but I can sure tell you it was a heck of a lot better than my most recent one (Miami) :) And, most importantly, I beat my sister by a second (or a bit less, but that still counts).