Race - Mother's Day Title 9K+ - Boulder, CO (Sunday, May 9, 2010)

For Mother's Day, my sisters and I decided to run the Mother's Day Title 9K+ at the Boulder Reservoir. 9K+ you might be asking? Yes... essentially 9.9K, which my Garmin calculated at 6.12 miles. Random. The weather had been iffy the last few weeks, so I was pretty relieved that the forecast was predicting a high of 71, which meant near perfect temps for the 9 am start. L and I met up with our older sister, W, in Boulder at 7:35 (only 5 minutes late, a record!) and we headed out. L still needed to get her packet, but that took only a few minutes, and we decided to hang out in the car until the race started. We made a somewhat poor decision of waiting a bit too long to use the port-o-potties before the race started, and we barely had enough time before gun time. No timing chips on this one, so it was a bit more important to get to the start on time (which, phew, we did). So W and L took off and I was alone almost immediately. Within the first few minutes, I was already regretting the beers I had the night before. I felt fatigued and dehydrated and made a conscious decision to stop and get water or gatorade (or both) at each aid station (which were supposedly at every mile). The weather was certainly the best part of my race, and with my new pouch, I was able to pull out my camera for the first time mid-race and get some pictures:

The canal - I loved the "certain death if entered" warning on the signs that were posted every 50 or so feet:

W got a shot of me running by toward the finish line (what's up with that chick blocking her shot??):

And we got someone to get a shot of team "Bee Rad" post-race:

I certainly struggled through this one, but the first half was worse than the second. I seemed to get a bit more energized for the last mile and actually ended with my fastest pace of the race:

Overall though, I'm pleased with the run, and will obviously suck less next time. PS... next year call it a 10K... calling it a 9K when it's less than .1 off from a 10K is discouraging. Kthx.