Monday, May 26, 2014

Vista Strawberry Festival 10K Recap

Yesterday morning Ryan and I ran the Vista Strawberry Festival 10K. This is actually the third year we have participated in this race weekend (it was one of the very first races I did back in 2012 when I started running!). In 2012 we did the 5K and last year we upgraded to the 10K when they added the longer distance.


Ry said they were more watermelon than strawberry, but I thought they were FESTIVE! 

Although it had only been a week since I finished my first full marathon and I had been feeling under the weather most of the week (i.e. feeling like I was HIT BY A TRAIN... I think due to the flu or some other bug, not having to do with the marathon itself), I was still planning on helping pace Ryan to PR his 10K time.

Last year, when we ran the race, he had signed up for it because he needed a qualifying time for the Disneyland Half Marathon. We went out trying to get close to an hour and ended up right at the hour mark. This year we were hoping he could improve his time slightly and break the sixty-minute mark.

They changed the course slightly, which was nice (last year it seemed like we were doing a lot more turning, so it was great to have more straightaways). The nasty Brengle Terrace hill was still there, but at least this time we were prepared for it (and realized that it KEPT GOING, rather than getting our hopes up we were done with it at the first turn :) ).

The one thing that was strange was that they didn't play the national anthem before the race. I realize there were only 405 finishers in the 10K, but I was still pretty surprised they didn't even have a recorded version to play... especially with it being Memorial Day weekend and all...

Well, the moment of truth... Did we beat Ryan's time from last year?

HECK YES WE DID!

Even after hilly Mile 4, we were still able to kick it in strong!

I will be the first to admit it. It was tough. With having eaten very little over the previous few days, I was zapped on energy (I could tell right away that my legs were cramp-y and I needed a banana like IMMEDIATELY) and my body was still pretty sore from whatever those flu-like symptoms were and don't get me started on the humidity (it was in the high 80% range the entire race), but WE DID IT!



We crossed the finish line extremely happy with what we had accomplished (getting faster every year is a GREAT thing)! We picked up our strawberries (one of the SWEETEST post-race treats ever), our medals, and took a breather while we waited for the beer garden to open (I mean we did finish the race before 8am :) ).

Berries AND Bling?! I'm in Heaven!

Team PRO Compression and LockLaces of course :) 

My green nails and sunnies helped finish out my "strawberry" look, wouldn't ya say?

I don't drink beer so Ryan lucks out and gets two :)

FREE BEER!

I ended up coming in 9th (out of 39) in my division (Female 25-29) and Ryan came in 18th (out of 28) in his (Male 30-34). We took places 132 and 133 overall (out of 405). I was the 52nd female to finish while Ryan was the 81st male to finish. Our official time was 58:44.

Source
Source

OH YEAH. And did you see what they put as Ryan's name?! Hehe. I guess they liked my last name better and put it for his too! (They seemed to screw up his registration royally... We physically mailed in our registrations to avoid the processing fees and whoever keyed it did NOT pay attention... Wrong last name, tiny t-shirt that they wouldn't let him exchange, etc.)

I think we will probably continue running this race in the future. It is a nice, local race with yummy strawberries at the finish. Not to mention it isn't too pricey and we can continue to chart our progress year after year.

Quite the BANGIN' participant shirt, huh?! The strawberry man is HUGE!

Not sure why the bibs say "Strawberry Surprise!"

The bling

Do you like smaller, local races? Or is your motto "The Bigger, The Better"?

1 comment:

EB said...

Great job! I love the little running Strawberry!