Viva la Fiesta Fandango!

This past weekend I ran the Fiesta Fandango 2.6 mile race con mis amigos Caitlin and Rob. Jer sat this one out because he did a pretty long workout earlier in the day. It was a totally different racing experience than what I’m used to. The San Antonio Road Runners put on this amazing event. Picture thousands of people lined up on both sides of the street cheering for you from start to finish! This race takes place literally minutes before the Fiesta Flambeau Parade that runs through downtown San Antonio. It was quite the experience!

Here's a picture of Rob early on that'll help give an example of what the crowd was like

We started off right in front of all the floats and bands that were getting ready to entertain what seemed like half of the San Antonio population. I couldn’t help but smile the entire time because at no point did the noise stop. I was just amazed to see sooooo many people out. The one thing I wasn’t expecting was all the bubbles! Tons of kids had bubbles and blew them towards the racers. At the start roughly 20 high schoolers dashed out in the lead, ahead of Rob (who ended up winning), and I gradually caught each and every one of them to come in third overall.

 

A couple meters from the finish! Yes, that's a boy in a dress behind me : )

The race was at 6:40PM, so it was a little toasty out, but luckily the clouds protected us from the sun. My time was a personal best, because shockingly I’ve never raced that distance before, with a 13:57. I really had no idea what pace that was, I leave the math for Jer, but when I found out I was pretty stoked. I was on low 16:40’s 5k pace, and with a personal best road 5k time of 17:15 set a couple years ago, I was pretty happy. Of course I mapped it out and it came really close to the 2.6 that was advertised...2.588.  Below is a little video from the race!

Things this spring has been a complete 180 compared to last year and I couldn’t be happier. I was dealing with getting my ferritin levels up as well as recovering from a butt injury caused by my clumsy body (tripping myself by getting one foot stuck through the shoelace of the other foot while running).

As Jer mentioned in a previous post I’m getting ready for the US Half Marathon Championships in June, mainly so Jer will have something else to focus on besides his big marathon : ) It’s a little misleading because as far as I know you don’t need a specific qualifying time to participate, but I’m pretty excited to race against some legit women on a gorgeous course. So in the meantime I’ve been getting my mileage back up into the mid 80’s-90’s. But no worries. I’ve decided to continue the clumsy streak and literally did a front flip over my dog last week causing me to lose a day of training because I hurt my bOOty a little too much. Luckily I was still able to get in 84 miles that week so I consider myself pretty fortunate. This week’s training will consist of getting up to about 95 miles, which includes a 13 mile progressive run in which I averaged 6:23 pace (started off at 7:00 and brought it home with a 5:41 last mile) and the infamous alternating 1ks workout. I’ll be doing 11 of those bad boys tomorrow at Incarnate Word since Trinity’s track is getting a HUGE makeover. Here are some photos to show the process thus far..

The old track will be missed..but the cement hard rubber, self draining water pit, and two inch high puddles, that accumulated in multiple spots on the track when it rains, will not.