Today I ran the John Daley Memorial One One Run. I did this race last year as my first race ever and it was a lot of fun then and was again today. This year I was hoping I would beat my time from last year (which was around 32 minutes, so not too difficult to accomplish haha) and ended up beating it by almost 10 minutes!
This year was the 30th anniversary of the One One Run and the shirts and bibs are pretty awesome. I think I'm becoming a race shirt snob and I love love LOVE when races give you a tech shirt that is not cotton that you will actually wear to run in and not just sleep or go to the grocery store in. The shirt this year is a black long sleeved Brooks tech shirt with pink and blue writing, with some snowflakes, and hats and earmuffs adorning some letters. The bib is also black (a first for me, all mine have had white backgrounds until now) and is pretty similar to the shirt. I'm excited to do a long trial run tomorrow with this shirt and my new Nathan Speed 2 belt and blinky light (my Christmas presents to myself) with the Urban Herd.
I parked and walked down the hill to the start line with basically enough time to adjust my bib, pop in my headphones and start my music and Runkeeper before the race started. I usually give myself enough time to walk around all the tents and people watch and stretch a bit before races, but I spent too much time chatting with Chris's aunt before I left. Oops! The race started and we made our way through the woods and around a few curves. I felt like I was keeping a pretty decent pace and even though with the wind chill it only felt like 21 degrees outside, I was starting to get warm, so I yanked off my cowl and stuck it in my pocket. My gloves came off about 3 minutes later. For some reason my shirts kept creeping up underneath my jacket and I kept having to pull them down, so annoying! We headed up a pretty steep hill which I somehow blocked out from last year (probably because the rest of the course is pretty flat) and after running back down it, the bottom of my shirts had shifted up past my belly button! If anyone can give me tips on how to keep those things down it would be greatly appreciated! I'm guessing it is because of the fabrics I chose to wear today.
I like the course for this race because you go through some wooded areas and then run around a lake which is iced over and just beautiful. There was a huge flock of birds laying on the ice today, but I couldn't tell what kind they were, they were too far away and huddled together. I passed the water stop without taking any water since I felt like I was too in the zone and didn't want to have to walk to drink it. I was bound and determined to finish the race without taking any walk breaks and I did! I ran up another small hill and through the finish line for a time of 22:54. I ended up with a negative split, which is awesome, but to be fair, the course IS only 2.2 miles with the hill after the first .5 mile, so I felt like that wasn't really to hard to do. Some people opted to do another loop for a total of 4.4 miles, but I was feeling tired and was just glad I ran the first loop without stopping, so I only did one loop.
I feel like this is a race I will keep signing up for as long as we live close enough to do it without traveling too far. It is a nice easy run, and I feel like doing a race on the first day of the year really sets a good tone for the rest of the year. It is wonderful to see so many families come out for a run or a walk and the mood of the race is just so celebratory and upbeat. Plus, the race doesn't start until 1:00 p.m., so if you stay up too late on New Year's Eve, or maybe drink a little too much, you don't have an early race time to worry about.
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