Last weekend was the second in the Winter Distance Series races, Frosty’s Frozen 5/10 miler. Hillary and I gave each other entry to this race series for Christmas, signing up for the middle distance (5k, 5mi, 10mi). This kind of gift (and it was the only gift we actually gave each other that was purely a Christmas gift) means that we must really like running, or we really like to punish the other and see each other in pain… to add further insult, I blithely offered to push the chariot with our kids in it for the races so Hill could run sans Chariot (for some reason I’m starting to think that this may all be a part of some master plan of Hillary’s.) In reality though it was so she could really work on her training as she is wanting to get back to it after the child birth induced hiatus to training; and Hillary isn’t a fan of anything induced! I had taken full advantage of Hillary’s “condition” due to pregnancy and post birth to get as much of a running endurance gap as I could over the past year and a half, so it was only fair to let Hill run on her own. I do get the added entertainment of a kid providing a rolling theme song though, as either or both of our kids regularly do – and much to our joy, its usually a joyful sound track.
We started at the back as we usually do since we like to start out a bit slower than a full sprint. Plus we need a little more room with the Chariot and we want to start out as a family, since it is family fun. As we are getting near the first mile mark, I realized that my watch wasn’t setup correctly for what I wanted to record as far as a training record, so I had Hillary take over pushing the Chariot for a little bit. Just as I finish adjusting my watch and take the chariot pushing back over – we get an announcement from Tana that she needs to use the potty. Hillary and I say our good byes and I pull off to the side. Luckily the chariot is rather large providing a visual cover and Tana has been schooled in the art of peeing outside as she has had many pee stops while hiking, back-packing, on Mom and Dad’s training runs, and in the middle of nowhere while riding in a car. After a minute or so, Tana had taken care of business and was loaded back up next to Brenna for some more fun in the Chariot. As I got back up to speed, I was scanning the crowd of runners in front of me until I spotted Hillary. She was somewhere around a quarter of a mile in front of me and the girls. Without doing any mental math to see if I could catch Hillary or not – I decided that that was now my goal for the race. It was game on – catch Hillary.
As we got near the turn around point of the course to head back to the start, I spotted Hill and was happy to see that I was gaining on her; though a bit worried as she looked pretty determined! Once I got heading back towards the finish area, I was hoping to see Hillary fairly quickly as I thought I had run a fairly good pace – what I forgot to take into account was that the last time I saw here, I was still running uphill and she was just starting to go down hill. Then I saw the 3mile marker signifying that I only had 2 miles to catch her if I was going to do it; unfortunately, I was also approaching a long line of people that were going ~2min+ per mile slower than I wanted to go and we were on a multi-use path that gets pretty filled when two people run next to each other. Some people were very nice and moved over, others held their spot but were spaced out enough that I could zig-zag around them; others just wanted to run next to their friend, so I went cross country style around them. Nothing like trainer intervals for a while as I sped up in the gaps and then slowed down to navigate around people nicely.
With around a mile and a half to go, I realized that I could catch Hill, so I started running even harder. At around 1 mile left, I was right behind Hillary thinking that we would run in together or at least with each other for a while – I was partially correct. She saw me and even though her face was a semi grimace due to the effort she was putting into running; her body was flowing smoothly and may as well have smirked at me as she started accelerating. So much for a little side by side friendly run for a while; Hill was trying to break me and not allow me to pass! Over the next quarter mile, Hill stretched the rubber band pretty thin with me just determined not to let the gap between us open up. Right as I’m starting to play mental games to keep up the pace, she slightly relents and I start to pass her. Being the lovely husband that I am, I don’t slow down a bit – I just keep running. Don’t want her to get a second wind and pass me again! As we get closer to the finish, I could tell that Hill was still pretty close, but we were coming on to some ice patches that were causing other runners to go to the sides of the path and slow down a little bit – this is where I had the advantage. While running with the chariot is normally a disadvantage, the extra points of contact for stability pay off largely when on slick ground as I was able to run directly across the ice patches rather than around them. As we approached the finish line, both Hill and I were getting ready to fully let loose, but as we crested the final hill before the finish line we could see that there was more packed snow and some ice so neither of us had a big sprint finish. Hillary came in ~4-6 seconds behind me putting in a great race as it was the longest race she had done since Bolder Boulder ’08 and she did so with negative splits the entire way. I have a feeling that the next couple running races we do will have us dueling more and more to see who beats who – and I’m looking forward to each and every one!