consistency plus

On Thanksgiving morning, I did my fifth running of the City Creek Canyon Cold Turkey 6K.  H's parents had come into town on Tuesday to join us for the holiday, so I had a larger than usual cheering section.  It had warmed up a bit since that lovely snowstorm: 50F at the finish, so the onlookers didn't freeze but not too warm for running.  The road was dry too so we had the standard course: start at the capitol to City Creek Canyon, up the canyon about a mile, turn around and run down with the finish in Memory Grove.  The start was a little disorganized and my legs felt very tired for the first half mile or so; I was just coming off a three week cold and was also worried that I might have overdone it at the gym Wednesday night.  Once we started climbing up the canyon, however, my legs loosened up a bit.  I'd been practicing hills so the up-canyon portion wasn't too bad.  Once we hit the turnaround though, a lot of people started passing me - I have short legs and just don't cover much ground with my strides.

Totally beat the girl in pink

I kept up with a guy in a green shirt for the all of the uphill and half of the downhill, then passed him as we entered Memory Grove.  After that, I kept a girl in a pink shirt in my sights, trying to close the gap.  She picked up the pace when the finish line was in sight - so I had to pick up my pace to stay with her - but she went out too soon and I ended up passing her, plus two other people right at the finish.  We hung around for just a bit so I could get a snack and some water and coffee, then headed home.

I didn't really have a feeling for how I ran this year.  I had hoped to beat last year's time (that's usually my only goal) but my legs had felt so heavy at the beginning that I wasn't sure I'd done it.  We had to wait a while for the results to be posted ... but when they were, I was pleasantly surprised:

Race results (and history)
2014:  34:14.58 (crushed last year's time!!!), 10 out of 26 in age group, 174/656 overall
2013:  35:44.40, 7 out of 24 in age group, 243/682 overall
2012:  n/a (Thanksgiving in California)
2011:  35:41.33, 249th out of 656 overall
2010:  37:22.76 (course changed due to ice/uphill finish), top half of finishers
2009:  35:53.32, top half of finishers

As you can see, I'm pretty consistent with three finishes within twelve seconds of each other.  Beating last year's time by nearly 30 seconds is a big jump tho' - I'm really going to have to train next year!  Here's somewhere else that I'm also consistent -  the pre-race photos.

This is this year, 2014:

And this is last year, 2013:

Same hat, same purple fleece, same goofy pose.  If nothing much changes, expect to see this again in 2015.