12,6km race

Last saturday I ran a 12,6km race. It was a 'once in a lifetime' event because it was the (pre) opening of a piece of highway that's being build in our area. Since (I think) it's pretty darn cool to say you have ran on a highway I entered the race. But when (last) tuesday rolled around and I got back from the training from hell (nothing worked or wanted to anyway) I began to have some serious doubts. After all if you can't run a 10km training properly what was I going to do running 12,6km's. Granted that tuesday it was absolutely freezing outside and that didn't help my training (I have athletic induced asthma so freezing weather is not helping me a lot) but without running a full 12,6km would I crash & burn after running 10km's? the answer is: NO:) Saturday started out great (overcast skies, not too cold and no rain) but when we were due to start it started raining, the wind was howling and I think every contestant asked him/herself whether running was indeed so great and why did we put ourselves through this LOL! I'm happy to say though that even though I had to run in the pouring rain the whole way, it was an awesome race. Why? because this was one of (very few races) that everything clicked, I felt great, my legs were strong (thanks to taking regular Bodypump classes), my asthma wasn't bothering me and I was able to run a constant time per km:) What an awesome feeling! I was afraid I was gonna end last because I'm not a really fast runner and because it was such a small event it generally attracts advanced runners etc. but I didn't end last in fact there were 6 people running behind me, YAY! At the last km I knew my time was good and decided to sprint to the finish and low and behold I surprised my bf and other running buddies by finishing in 1hr24min, 6 minutes earlier than what we calculated beforehand!!!  I spent the rest of the day on cloud nine and I can't wait to run my next (10km) race on april 10th!