Run with the Roosters 5 mile race

Cockadoodle doo! Woke up at 3:30am for the long ride over Gates Pass in the Tucson Mountains to Old Tucson. The race started at 5:15am.

Me and Shari at the start: It was just getting light out when the race started. It was about 80 degrees out already - supposed to get to 109 today!Total distance: 5 miles (I calculated 5.04)

Total time: 43:01 minutes

Average pace: 8:37 min/mile (although I calculated 8:32 because my distance was slightly longer on my Garmin)

I placed 3rd in my age group!

I came in 75th out of 265 finishers. I came in 24th out of 152 women finishers. Here I am checking out the results (I look so serious....):

Not bad for doing no speedwork for a long time. I felt pretty peppy for 5:15 in the morning.

The course was great - along Kinney road and into Ironwood picnic area. Kinney road was closed for the event, so no traffic! Nice rolling hills, but mostly flat; only 524 feet elevation gain over the whole course. The Tucson Mountains are just beautiful. Nice race course.

Finished with a free Robek's smoothie (ice cold!) and some free breakfast - beans and tortilla (they also have eggs, but I skipped that) and stayed for awards. I got a medal. Joyce got a pic of me happily strutting back with my medallion: We also got super cute technical tanks for finishing, and they had women's sizes! I got a small, which fit perfectly. Many races give out men's size shirts, and since I'm so short waisted, they usually look like dresses on me!

I was home by 7:45am! Nice way to start the day.

I got in a whopping 20 miles running for the week, and 5 miles walking (walking Cracker Dog). Cracker ran 4 miles with me one day.