Nathan and I decided to try something new this year… a winter race series! We did the Fleet Feet Snowball Race Series in St. Louis, which consists of 4 different races with different lengths. It was a lot of fun, but I don’t think cold weather running is the best for me! Some of the races were REALLY cold and we both have asthma that flairs up a bit with cold weather. However, we DID it and it was a lot of fun (and something different!).
First Race: Forest Park 5K
We were both really pleased with our time for the first race, given that it was at 8:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day. We had gone to The Melting Pot and stuffed ourselves silly full of food the night before, so we were glad our stomachs didn’t bother us during the race. Ha, ha! The temperature was 32 degrees at start time.
Nathan did really well, he finished at 20:11, which was a 6:30 pace. I finished at 28:25 with an 9:09 pace. There was a big hill near the beginning and near the end. We got donuts at the end!
Second Race: Creve Coeur Lake/Soccer Complex
The second race (in Kirkwood) for the series was postponed until February due to ice/wind/etc., so it will be the last race to the series. So, we went 4 weeks without a race! So, the Creve Coeur Lake/Soccer Complex became the second race to the series and it was a 6K (4.35 miles). 4 miles is kind of my ‘sweet spot’ when it comes to running, it is my favorite distance to run when I’m training. Also, this race was pretty much 100% flat, so that is always a treat. Although, sometimes flat can become a little boring. We both did REALLY good and my pace was actually faster than it was for race 1 at 9:02! Def. not a PR pace, but 9:00 is the pace I’ve been training at, so it was a nice strong run or me. (I’ve been trying to increase my pace a little every 6 months.) We got these little magnetic snowball medals that we can attach to our bigger medal that we got at the first race. I’ll show a photo of the medal with all the snowballs on it at the end of this post.
Nathan did really well, he finished at 29:33, which was a 6:48 pace. I finished at 39:15 with an 9:02 pace. They had donuts for us again at the end! Yay!
At every race they’ve had Tom’s Coffee Truck and ONE of these times I’m going to get a coffee after I run. The first race was BITTERLY cold and I couldn’t at this race, because we had to hurry and get home to get ready for Nathan’s scholarship competition at the university, SOOO maybe next time?! And, here is a photo of the snowball medal!
Third Race: Frontier Park in St. Charles
The third race (in St. Charles) was the warmest race of the series at 38 degrees. This was also the longest race of the series at 5 miles.
This was my best pace yet at 8:57! It was mostly flat except for a couple hills. Nathan wasn’t happy with how he did, but he still beat me by quite a bit.
I will say, the photos for my spring/summer/fall races are so much prettier than they’ve been for this winter race! But, here is a pretty sunrise by the river and a colorful donut that I enjoyed after the race!
Fourth Race: Kirkwood
Well… the weather didn’t work out for the Kirkwood race and they couldn’t reschedule it a second time, so they turned it into a virtual race (I ran on the treadmill at home). I think I’m going to sign up for just the Kirkwood Snowball race NEXT winter, so I can at least say I’ve done it and to see what the course is like for it. You can sign up for all of the Snowball races or just the ones you want to do. We landed up getting almost 4″ of snow the night before in St. Louis and sleet/freezing rain before that, so they just didn’t want to risk anyone running on ice. Plus, it would have been a frigid 16 degrees at start, which is just hard to imagine what it’d be like to run in that and if it’d bother my asthma. SO, I think it was for the best, even though I was a little bummed!
The medals for these 4 races are SO, so cool! The first race we got a HUGE medal that we could put the smaller magnetic medals on for the next 3 races. How cool is that? I can’t wait to display it on my medal rack!
