Miles with the Giant 2012

Miles with the Giant 2012

This year the Miles with the Giant was amazing, the race itself, the volunteers, the race organizers, and last but truly the best the pace bunnies. I had a plan this year and Carol my run buddy had a plan for herself. We had agreed that we would both start out together and if our plans went astray we would leave one another to fulfill our own plan, with no hard feelings.

I have learned to not start out to fast (a work in progress), I have learned to watch my pace on my watch to know where I am, and have learned to recognize when I need to gel and listening to my body.  We were running along and enjoying ourselves, I had a goal to beat my 2:40 and Carol wanted to run 2:30, so we maintained a pace between Karen Dahl and Cheryl Ready. We were running 7:1’s which meant we had run faster during the 7 minutes to make up for more walking then the pace bunnies. There was a point during the run that I kept saying to Carol “ I can see Cheryl, I can never see Cheryl, I was just so thrilled with the fact that I was running fast enough to keep up with Cheryl” I have always admired Cheryl Ready’s running, she is so steady and well balanced.

Cheryl did her part getting me to the finish line to far surpass my goal. I hope that all the pace bunnies know that by volunteering there race to help others reach their goal, affects not only the runner but all the challenges and people that sacrificed so much in the training months (families) it all pays off that one day.

I had actually kept my long sleeve shirt on until we were headed to Centennial along Arundal, that is far longer then it usually takes for me to start to warm up. When we came to Boulevard from Current River the wind came up and it was freezing cold. I was not going to put my sleeves back on, I refused. I was going to steal Carol’s Buff and wear it as a tube top boob warmer, the wind then died down, lucky for Carol.

I was flying on a high the whole race, it was so amazing. The last mile I had looked at my Garmin and we were far ahead of my goal and we were coming up to 2:30, I swore the whole last mile because I was not going to cut back after coming this far. 

We came over the Marina bridge and I thought a few hundred yards to the finish and then I realized that we had to head to the left and around the corner to the finish line, AROUND THE CORNER, I was not ready for this. Sorry for all the non PG language in that last mile, I was pulling the effort for that last mile from deep inside.

We came across the finish line in 2:26 and I could not have been happier, we surpassed my goal and surpassed Carol’s goal.

Miles with the Giant 2012 was the run of my life, who says you have to travel anywhere to experience an awesome race and a runners high I had for many days afterwards.

Congratulations to everyone in all of the race categories.