TOUR DES FLEURS - THE OFFICIAL RACE REPORT

*This is a guest post written by the co-owner of the SHOP (Lauren)

Drew asked me to write a post race report... first thing first, I ran the 20K (12.4 mile) Tour des Fleurs in 1:27:47 which figures out to be 7:04 minute mile pace.  Quite exciting! 

Out of roughly 1,750 participants I finished FIRST in the female aged 25-29 group, came in FIFTH overall woman and THIRTY-FIFTH overall person!  Not bad!

I was a little worried about the weather, as it has been raining buckets for the past 2 weeks. Which has made my past couple of runs really fun.  The "girls" (my dogs) and I went out in the rain for long runs, we got soaked, but it stays cool and there is noone out.  Am I crazy?  Anyway, it stopped raining the day before the race, but an insufferable humidity was left behind.  Yuck!  Felt like you had taken a dunk in the lake by mile 3.

The course was great, except for the hills.  Lots and lots of hills. I can definitely tell that my SHOP workouts have stregthened my legs.  All those one legged squats and Bulgarian split squats helped me kill the hills.  Except for this one hill!  About a mile left, I remembered that I had to run up the "Spillway Hill"  We usually bike the opposite direction down the "Spillway Hill" and love it because we can fly down and pick up enough speed to clock 35 mph on the bike. Fun times.  But running up the hill really sucked!  I had almost reached the top, when I got that "ick" feeling in my stomach. Oh no, Throw up! I let up a tad, took some deep breaths, got to the top, and  coasted to the bottom without anything bad happening or anyone passing me! Suckers!

Even more exciting I got a $125 gift certificate to Luke's Locker, a couple awesome Tshirts, and a really awesome running hat! Even better is the satisfaction that I kicked ass!

Lauren