Another Bloomsday 12k in the books! If you haven’t had a chance to make the trip up to Spokane for this race, I highly recommend it. It’s one of the more organized and friendly races out there, and the fact that they typically have close to 50,000 participants each year is a testament to the quality of the race.
This year I had a goal of achieving top 15 overall and top 5 for American women, and although I didn’t run the [record breaking] PR I was hoping to run, or place where I wanted to place, I was really happy that I executed my race strategy the way I had planned. It was a fairly warm morning in Spokane, but I wasn’t worried about the heat. I had a new racing kit that was fit for the heat and I was ready to tackle the course!
The race went out at 5:20-5:30 pace which was much faster than I had hoped (5:45 was my goal), so I had a tough time recovering from that. I did make the conscious decision not to go out with the lead pack, but even still, my first mile split was not ideal. I backed off even more through the hills, which enabled to me speed back up over the last two miles and pass a few girls. Having just come back from a really great 10k, I could have used another week between the two races, but overall I felt really strong, ran a tactical race, and broke my PR by 40 seconds. I also placed 27th overall and 15th among Americans – it was a stacked field this year, and I have no doubt it will continue to attract faster world class runners every year.
Postscript:
As I look back on race day, one of the things that I was really concerned about was my race kit. I was really excited to be in the elite field and I wanted to look the part, so I built up the courage to wear an outfit that would make me feel fast. I’ve always been fairly self-conscious about my body because I don’t look like a runner or I don't have the runner body type (this has been said to me too many times). The way I get around this is by channeling my inner strength and focusing on the word “STRONG”. It’s not a unique word, but it works for me. I train every day, I eat very healthy, and I immerse myself in sports outside of running to force my body to experience all ranges of motion, not just the forward that we are subjected to with running. All these activities make me even stronger. So why should I be concerned about my body? Because it's what we did as pre-teens and teenagers when we discovered the mirror, and it's what we continue to do today. We constantly compare ourselves to those around us and it’s not healthy. I’ve been working really hard on this, and one person that I really look up to is Allie Kieffer…because like me, she is faced with the same body image challenges, but instead of internalizing it, she has developed a platform to share her challenges and give a voice to all women to speak up about body image. This is also the reason I joined and run for Oiselle. I'm not one to externalize my feelings, but just the fact that I am writing this today says a lot about the impact that Oiselle and Allie have had on my life.