April Race - Iron Girl 10K (Clearwater)

April shower's bring May flowers, but there was hardly a drop of rain in sight as 1500 runners lined up for the Iron Girl 10K in Clearwater. I love this race because this was the first ever organized race that I ran last year.

The race starts at Coachman Park right on the water and we run over the Memorial Causeway bridge into Clearwater Beach, turn around and come back for a second go at the bridge. Below is a picture of the bridge:

It's huge! The first mile of the race is all uphill. It makes you consider your strategy. I don't train hills, because there aren't any in Gainesville, so once I made it to the top I was spent. And I still had 5 miles to go. My goal for this race was to beat last year's time which was 1:09:00.

I'm the blur of pink crossing the finish line. My time was 1:07:57, which beat last year's time! Yay! Below is a shot of me with the bridge after I conquered it - twice!Billy is such a trooper. Both years he has gone to this race with me and both years men are outnumbered. The Iron Girl race series is for all women. It's very empowering and they are all about celebrating women. When you approach the end they somehow know your name and the emcee yells out as you cross the finish line, "Iron Girl, Kristina Patten from Gainesville, finishing. Let's hear it! Those cheers are for you, Kristina!" It's really cool.

The swag you get is pretty neat too. This year we got a re-usable bag, a cute little AFLAC duck that talks and an awesome dri-fit running singlet. I'm wearing mine in the pictures.

It was a good race, a good day to race and a good trip overall.

Next race is at Ironwood (which is where I live) on the 15th. It's a 5K and my goal for this one is to finish in under 30 minutes.