Piece of Cake 10K

I second my comment from last year - this race should be called the "Not such a piece of cake" 10K :)  Seneca Creek State Park is beautiful, but some of those hills are pretty intense!

I woke up early to finish my cake for the MCRRC cake competition. George was giving me a bit of an inferiority complex by saying that nothing beat my flowerpot from last year! But I kept icing my cake (and turning my hands black in the process!) and in the end, I knew that runners wouldn't be able to resist eating asphalt...For all of the times that I've fallen and eaten asphalt, the chocolate kind sure tastes better! :)  Here's a picture of the cake (which won "Most Creative" this year!):

Note the footprints in the cake where runners have already run by! I bought the shoes at Payless, where I was surprised to find that they carry baby Champions.  But that's another story for another day.  The cake was definitely a hit at the meeting 

I got to the PoC10K and met up with Mark, who told me his double top secret goal time, which was insanely fast!  I told him that I would try to run with him, but he had my permission to run off if I was too slow for him.  In the actual race, we ran together for ~0.75 miles, and then I waved to him as he sped off.  The rest of the race was rather uneventful, I was trying to hold sub-8:30s, which was definitely not a conversational pace.  I was totally focused on breathing and wasn't really talking to anyone.  I hope no one thought I was being anti-social! President Cathy Blessing passed me around mile 3, and I played cat and mouse with her for the last 3 miles, catching up with her on the uphills, and having her blast away from me on the downhills. In the end, her downhill kicks won out, but I'm absolutely sure I wouldn't have run as fast as I did if I wasn't trying to catch her for the last 3 miles!

Split times for the 6 miles: 7:51, 8:17, 8:49 (ouch!), 8:38, 8:30, 8:48 

Total time: 52:39, a 10K PR for me by ~ 3 minutes, and 7 minutes faster at this race than last year!

Also, a big congrats to Mark on his crazy, fast PR of 46:57.  His double top secret goal time was sub-50 minutes, which he smashed in style!  More congratulations to Kate, Emaad and Wayne who ran the National marathon, finishing in 4:23, 4:38 and 4:29, respectively.  Awesome running on a lovely Saturday morning, the first day of spring! :)

I'm totally psyched up for the Spring season now, especially since my orals are over and I'm starting to feel normal again.   I've got a couple big things on the books.  The first of which is the Cherry Blossom 10 mile in 2 weeks, where my double top-secret goal is to be sub-1:25 (whoops, not a secret anymore!).  What else? I'm running Pikes Peak for the first time this year, and it looks like Emaad and I are going to run the Frederick Marathon on May 2nd!  Yay for Spring!