Firecracker 4 Mile Race Recap

On July 4th I ran the Firecracker 4 miler that is held locally annually. Last year, the first year they had the 4 mile (in addition to a 4k), I ran with some awesome ladies in my running group.  This year I was hoping to push the pace and “race it” and see what I could do.

There was a good group of awesome friends doing the races so of course we had to show off our guns pre-race.

Then we split up to go to the different start lines.  The 4 mile race started first, a little bit after 9am.  It was already warm and humid (my garmin stats say it was 68 but it felt a lot warmer than that).

Pre-race selfie with Day!

I planned to race but I took off way too fast clocking the first mile in under 9 minutes. Day even called me out on it and I responded “yea that’s just not necessary.”  The downhill at the beginning probably played a part too. 🙂

Miles 2 and 3 felt much harder. They each had substantial hills, and the heat and sun was hitting me. I slowed a bit more and had to walk a tad on the second hill (grr). I was a bit disappointed in how hard those two hills felt because we run them pretty regularly as part of our running group.  I’m going to blame the fact that it was after 9am (and not 6am when I am usually running up them) and the hot weather as the reasons they felt so cruddy this time around.  10:33, 10:39

Mile 4 was tough but some of my friends came up behind me and I just tried to keep up with them. I knew I was almost done and just tried to keep pushing. 9:51

The “official” stats:

Garmin time was 40:08, OT: 40:14 (thanks to the gun start and no timing mat at the beginning).  Overall I am happy that I was able to maintain a 10:00 pace on this race on a tough course. It’s about a 4 minute PR from last year too, so I really can’t complain about that.

But man would I have loved to edge in with a pace with a 9 at the front of it, given my pace at the Hershey 10k this year.  Maybe next year. 🙂  There’s always a new goal you can set and push towards!

Finish line smiles!