Pumpkin in a can...

Also known as the Great Pumpkin Race Recap. :)

Also known as, "How do you keep your friends in suspense? I'll give you the details in a minute."

LOL! I crack myself up.

I'm also not that mean... my official stats are:

Overall placement: 311 (out of 406 finishers... I had almost 100 people finish after me! YAY I wasn't last! :)
Time: 38:08.9 (SCHWEET!)
Placement in age group: 16 (haven't taken the time to figure out how many in my age group there were. :)
Average pace: 12:16.7 (doode!)

Now that we have that out of the way, on the fun stuff. :)

Friday night I went and got my packet after work... whoo hoo! /Another/ bag (to add to the 50 bajillion I've already got! LOL! But WAY better than getting a T-shirt!!)


I tried to bribe the the guy to give me #40 instead, but alas, all the numbers were preassigned. So I was lucky #43 instead. I'm good with that.

I got my stuff together much when I got home, cuz that's how I roll. ;)


I, of course, felt like I was missing something, though Julee would have disagreed since it looked like I had enough stuff for a week! (seriously! I had a cooler bag, a bag w/a change of clothes that I didn't need, fanny pack and jacket. Took us both to carry everything out in one trip!)

I had my knee taped up Thursday (sorry for the pasty whiteness) since it was feeling extra tweaky... was glad I did - I had noooo problems and was nice to not have to worry about it. Also had an ice pack for the way home to keep any potential swelling/stiffness at bay.



That night I did a wee bit of carb-loading - had some pasta with my dinner, but not a huge amount. I was approaching the race as a cross between my usual Saturday morning long walk/run, and something special, which it essentially was. I didn't want to overload my system with starch at one meal, since I'm really not used to it... would probably not be a fun night/morning for me, I'm thinkin'.

Saturday morning arrived way too early, as it does, but I got up, got myself ready, had breakfast, coffee & packed in time for the awesome Julee to arrive. I was sooo happy to have her there with me - not only was it a great distraction and getting to spend quality time with her, it was like having my own staff: chauffeur, paparazzi, time keeper and stunt brain, all in one! LOL!

We arrived, I checked in, headed back to the car to get the final swig of coffee, get my number and sign attached...



I had a few last minute donations and didn't have time to add them to the list. Thank you to everyone who donated!!!

...and fuel up.


The course itself was really interesting - mostly hard packed dirt/road. The announcer guy mentioned it was a 'fast' course, but I didn't believe him... Either way I started out at a fast walk for the first 8-10 minutes and planned do to intervals of 4 minutes of faster walking/running and 1 minute recovery. Not a lot of recovery, but it actually did pretty well. Anywho, I hit mile marker 1 and almost fell over. Not from exhaustion or from pain, but from surprise. I got to it in just under 12 minutes! Seriously!? From just walking?!?! Doode!

I was feeling good overall at that point and had enough room around me that I was able to settle into my own pace and happily go along listening to my music. I passed some people, got passed by others, played back-and-forth with a few more. It was fun. I got a bit worried when I hit the pumpkin patch - the rows were covered in slippery straw and very uneven ground - but that too was just part of the experience.

As I hit the 2nd mile marker I was still stunned by my pace and even more so when I hit the 3rd mile marker.


You see, my goal was to finish in under 50 minutes. As you can see from my time, I not only met that goal, I did it all in under 40 minutes... and probably would have had a time of around 37 minutes if I didn't stop to take this photo...


I just had to do a "aaahhh!! In scary corn field" photo! And the funny thing was, a little way in there was a lady taking a photo of her 2 kids that were tucked in amongst the stalks. I joked with her that there really /were/ children of the corn here! She laughed, I went on my merry way.

I was thrilled & surprised with my time, and had a great time overall. I felt great afterwards - basically the 3-ish miles I did last weekend took way more out of me than this did!

After all the results were posted, and awards were started to be given out for the top finishers, we hit the pumpkin patch to fetch us some happy gourds, then head back home.

The experience was fantastic, the atmosphere was fun and the only "bad" thing I had to say was that I was surprised that there weren't any water stations on the course. Being a bit cooler, we didn't really need it as much, and being in AZ, people are trained to bring water with them everywhere... still it was a surprise that there wasn't any except for in check in/congregating area. I'm really glad I had the experience, and I have to be honest, I'm glad it's over, but for a reason you may not expect.

See, I used to be the all cardio, all the time type of a gal. Treadmill & Elliptical, and occasionally the bike... I was all over it. Weights - ::hiss::

NOW I've moved into more of the all weights, all the time with some cardio thrown in for warm-ups and to keep my endurance up.

The few weeks leading up to this event, I sort of flipped back to Cardio Queen mode. 3-4 walk/run interval workouts a week with 1-2 strength training sessions. It was a nice change, but I've been soooo happy to get back to my 'regular' silliness on the weight floor this week!

Will I do it again?

Probably... I might even be silly enough to work my way up to a 10K or a 1/2 marathon in the future... just to see if it could be done.

Just not any time soon. ;)