Love 'em or Leave 'em

On Saturday I ran a nice little rust-buster of a 5K, the Love 'em or Leave 'em Valentine's Day Dash. As much as I want to pretend I strategically worked it into my racing plan for this season, the real reason I did it is because my boyfriend roped me into it. There's a couple's prize every year. He saw the results from 2013:

 1.   36:01 Blazzin' Saddles                                   (18:01)
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  1    17:56    146 Brandon Byhre           30 M 
  2    18:05    285 Andrea Eiseman          29 F 

And he figured we could win this. And I like winning. A lot. Probably too much. The idea of winning as a couple was even cooler. We'd both have to have good races to do well. It'd be a joint effort. I couldn't resist. Suddenly I found myself moving around my race schedule to conveniently fit in this 5K in early February, you know, as a rust-buster and a tune-up for the 15 miler two weeks later.

So did a bunch of the Club Northwest ladies. And the Oiselle ladies. For a local race, the depth on the women's side was ridiculous. I probably sound like a sore loser pointing that out, but it's really something I'm super happy about. As a Reasonably Fast Woman I often find myself in no-man's land, or at least no-woman's land. The guys' side of a typical local 5K will have a handful of dudes in the fifteens, sixteens, and seventeens bunched together pretty well, but the girls' side will have maybe that one chick in the high sixteens and then a sparse scattering of women between seventeen-something and twenty-plus. That was not the case on Saturday. It was awesome.

My race was pretty good. I tucked in behind my friend Natty who had a stellar race. She dropped me after a 5:55 mile. I didn't really reap the benefits of the depth of the field, I faded a bit, and I questioned my sanity like I usually do (5Ks are so much more painful and difficult than long races and all of you 5K runners are totally nuts). But I still came in at 18:51, a road PR and 11 seconds off of my track PR from last year, and in February at that.

I can also tell I gave it my all because the friendly photographer caught a beautiful picture of me with spit running down the side of my neck to add to my race face collection:

I am such a graceful racer.

That was only good for 19th in a local race, which, again, I find awesome:

Unfortunately, Andy and I came up short in our division:

 1.   34:25 TRI HEARTS                                         (17:13)
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  1    15:19    749 Mason Nicol             19 M 
  2    19:06    584 Bri Gibson              16 F 

  2.   34:40 Club Northwest Teamcest                           (17:20)
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  1    15:49    772 Andrew Reed             25 M 
  2    18:51    780 Talia Ringer            23 F 

I was pretty happy since those were good times for both of us. Andy's reaction was a sad face and "we don't get a prize?"