Running of the [Arctic] Squirrels

Remember the cold weather PR I set at the Cabin Fever Reliever last month? I bettered that at the Running of the Squirrels 5k, which took place in a 12 degree air temperature and 0 degree wind chill! Yay?

Fortunately, I wasn't planning to truly race this one so the weather mattered a lot less, but it did make me less excited about running that morning, mostly because I thought we were through the worst of the winter weather for the year. It snowed the day before the race but luckily the roads were clear.

Spoiler photo, but I wanted it to be the featured
picture on this post

I really wanted to try to win another porcelain squirrel trophy, and I'd be doing a training run in the bitter cold whether or not I ran the race, so I headed to the event as planned. I usually don't care about race awards that aren't cash (just a side effect of 30 years of running!), but I really adore the white squirrel trophies from this race. They are the only running awards I have displayed in my house! The race fell 2 weeks before my 50k goal race, so I'd planned to incorporate it into a long run workout. My original plan was to run it at threshold pace (6:00-6:10), but when I saw the temperature I started rationalizing that marathon pace would be just fine if that was enough to win overall female. After the race I planned to run the course a second time at marathon pace, then run easy to 18 miles total - but I was being such a wimp about the weather I told Colin that we could always just run 12 miles total on race day and do the 18 on Sunday!

Colin and I had the same goals for the day: overall wins without running too hard, plus the marathon pace miles then easy miles to complete the long run. We got in 5 easy miles before the race, and running north into the wind was very brisk but we've run in worse. I covered my face in Vaseline so I wouldn't need to wear a mask, which helped a lot compared to having nothing on my face.

When we lined up for the start, it looked like Colin's main competition would be a few high school boys. As the race took off, I was in overall female position within 100 m, and Colin was leading the race. I picked off the high school boys between us within the first mile, passing the last of them just as my Garmin beeped. I 'd settled on aiming for threshold effort and focused on staying strong and even throughout the race. I have been doing most of my workouts with Spencer and missed having him along! Colin was quite far ahead of me and there was only one volunteer on the course, but it was well-marked and we'd run it as part of the pre-race easy miles (plus we'd run it three times last year!), so it was easy to follow.

The race was pretty uneventful, and I knew it was going to be 3.2+ from running the course once already. My watch beeped 3 right as I turned onto the final road, and instinct took over and I picked it up for the final bit even though I didn't need to. Colin was waiting for me to finish, and a lady from the Regional Library interviewed us together after I came through. I made her take note that we were from the Miles from Mentor group! I didn't get to look at my splits until I finished running for the day, because I put everything on the same run (easy, race, jog, marathon pace, easy) so I didn't have 5 activity uploads like last year, but eventually found out my splits were 6:10, 6:12, 6:07 (5:39 for the final 0.24). Colin ran hard and would have run a PR (mid-16/5:20ish pace) had the course been the correct distance, so I felt bad for him - though he can definitely break 16 in good weather with someone pushing him.

We then jogged 0.5 and ran the course again at marathon pace: 6:27, 6:23, 6:16, which felt great. After grabbing a drink we started our easy miles to finish up the day. When we were at about 14 miles total, we looped by the school where the awards ceremony was to use the bathroom and check on awards timing. The band was playing, which we knew from last year was the start of the awards ceremony (the race is a fund raiser for the high school band), so we stayed inside to pick up our white squirrels before heading back out to finish the day's mileage.

During our marathon pace miles - I forgot 
to take my bib number off

In hindsight, I kind of wish I'd raced the race like Colin did, but I also just didn't have it in me mentally to race a 5k that morning! I think it was a combination of a heavy training week (my Wednesday workout was much harder than this day's workout), knowing I probably wouldn't have to run all-out to win, knowing the course was long, being afraid of 5k pain, and the weather. I wouldn't have run anything impressive, but I could have run faster than threshold place. But, saving my all-out racing for the Prairie Spirit 50k and the Boston Marathon is probably a better plan! And, I got the squirrel, so all is well, right?

Results are here, my post about the 2021 race is here, and my Strava activity is here.

2022 winnings

My 3 squirrel set

Creepy