Washington D.C. Jingle All the Way 10k!

Success!!

I officially have a new 10k race PR (personal record)!!! Read on to see what it is ;)

As you guys know, this morning I ran the Jingle All the Way 10k here in Washington, D.C.

It was raining, freezing cold, and generally disgusting weather for a race — but still preferable to my hot as hell half marathon, so I took it ;) (I had to take these pictures on my phone and it was unhappy with the rain, so disregard the ghetto quality and blue color)

I loved that people wore Santa hats and fun outfits! We were also each given a jingle bell to put on our shoe. Heh.

My high school BFF, Jenny (in the middle below) came and picked me up at an ungodly hour this morning — the race STARTED at 7:30 a.m.! We had some issues finding parking and ended up arriving only about 10 minutes before the race started, but thankfully we were still able to find our friend Lara so she and Jenny could run together!

(What the heck is that guy to the right of the photo doing?!)

Jenny and Lara were aiming to run 10 minute miles together, and I couldn’t find any of the blog friends I was planning to run with, so I headed off to the start on my own, ready to rock!

Minus the nasty wet and cold weather, I actually felt pretty good the whole time! The course took us all along the water and past some of the monuments (although it was so foggy we couldn’t see anything) and was nice and flat. It was actually a lot of the same course that I ran for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler back in April! Fun. Anytime I got tired, I reminded myself that this race was nearly 4 miles shorter than the race I did that day :)

I was really pleased that I was able to maintain a good pace the whole time — even getting faster as the race went on! Anytime I started slowing I pushed myself to go faster and maintain my speed. Yay!

Splits:

• Mile 1: 8:24
• Mile 2: 8:18
• Mile 3: 8:25
• Mile 4: 8:13
• Mile 5: 8:14
• Mile 6: 8:05
• 0.2 nubbin pace: 7:32 (!)

Woohoo! I finished in 51:34 with an average pace of 8:15 according to my Garmin watch — we’ll see what my official time is when the results are posted, but my old PR was 53 minutes (at the 10k Turkey Trot in St. Petersburg, FL over Thanksgiving 2009 — the last time I did a 10k!), so either way, I smashed it!

With sore legs and a smile on my face, I’m off to the enjoy the rest of the day. Racing is so addictive — I’m already thinking about my next goal being to try to finish a 10k in under 50 minutes ;) I think I enjoy challenging myself more with running speed vs. distance — how about you guys? Although I do still want to do another half marathon so I can finish in under 2 hours this time — there’s talk of doing one with my grad school friends in the spring. We’ll see!

Have a great Sunday, friends! And congrats to my girls Jenny and Lara for their awesome race times and new PR’s this morning, too :)