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| The Town Crier reads the Proclamation to begin the 16th Annual running of The Beat Beethoven 8km race in downtown Kingston. |
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| The Kingston Symphony waits to begin playing the 50 min. selection of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" in the free outdoor concert! |
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| 512 racers stand ready for the music to begin playing and the race to commence. |
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| My Arch-nemesis Stacey with me behind at 2km |
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| Why is everyone chasing me?!?;-) |
Chip time- 36:56 which was a PR by 11 seconds
Thank goodness Stacey was running strong today because she kept me running hard the entire distance and helped me run a PR and win 2nd in my age(which was a 10 year age group) so I was happy with both of those accomplishments today. I ran a very even race pace wise and at approx. the same pace as I ran my 5km a few weeks ago so it is nice to see that my training is taking hold and my fitness is building. Hitting the 5km mark was tough for me as mentally I was done however the old legs still had some gas in them and carried me to the finish line despite what the rest of me wanted to do.
Note: I believe my first official race ever was The 2005 Beat Beethoven 8km where I placed 480th out of 543 runners in a time of 51:52(I didn't beat Beethoven). Today I was 69th out of 512 and almost exactly 15 minutes faster;-)
PS- lest I forget to mention I wore a HR monitor for the first time in a race today. I wore it on my long run with Tammie last weekend and for the 16km my hr jumped between 140bpm and 160 due in part to the many hills on the course with an average of 150bpm for the run. In my one interval workout of the week I was running in the mid 170's bpm for my repeats and topped out at 181 which was pretty much the same for my race with an average of 175ish and a max of 182 although I think my true max might be a bit higher but I will have to wait and see about that. Here is a link to the data my Garmin collected from the race including HR, pace etc. Kinda cool to see.
