Zoo Run - check!

The morning of the zoo run, I woke up at 5am to the sight of heavy, pouring, bucketing rain outside of my window, and frost growing on my poor plant on the balcony.  I peeled myself out of the warm, bundley goodness of my thick comforter, ate a small breakfast, and pulled on my running shoes.  Rain or not, I was running the zoo.

And... I did!  By the time I got to the finish line, the sun was up, the giraffes were out roaming, wolves howling at passing runners (kind of creepy, actually), and monkeys staring at us in wonder.  "You evolved from us... into THIS?  Fools. *continues munching breakfast while sitting comfortably in their tree*"

I wasn't expecting a PB to come out of the zoo run from the very beginning, because I had been told that it was very hilly (my PB came from the Sporting Life 10K, which is almost entirely downhill).  Also my performance at the Yonge St 10K was rather abysmal, and I didn't have very high expectations following that.  Especially once I got onto MapMyRun.com and mapped out the route for the zoo run.  This was the elevation that popped out:

 

 

Hooray?

Things that weren't so condusive to having a good run this day included the fact that it was rainy, making the road slippery and trails muddy.  Oh, and that I somehow blew out my knee somewhere around 7.5km and was unable to go up hills without searing agony afterward.  Interestingly, though, when I checked my time at the 5k line, I was actually faster than my pace for my target (I was hoping for 1:17:00, or a 38:30 5km; I crossed the 5k line at about 37:30 according to iPod)



But get this...




My time for the zoo was faster than the Yonge St 10K.



You know, that all-downhill run that I did in April?



And how this one was all hills and mud?


FASTER!!!!


When I stopped my iPod and checked out my time, I actually cried.  I was injured and hobbling, soaking wet and my shoes slick with mud.  But I ran this thing FASTER!!!!!!!!!

My official time was 1:18:55 (Yonge St was over 1:20:28).  I'm happy!  I took a minute and a half off my last 10k time, on a very hilly course, and a knee injury! 

The strange thing though, is that both on MapMyRun and on my iPod (which notoriously underestimates my distance since it isn't GPS), the distance was actually longer than 10K.  And not just by like, 0.02k or something, it was almost a full half km longer (iPod tracked me at 10.35km, and MapMyRun was just a bit longer).  According to the iPod, I crossed 10km at 1:16:20.  I'm happy!!

My friend Tracy was standing by the finish line to cheer me through and take this fabulous shot (note - that time is the gun time, but since I was 4 corrals in, my chip time is obviously a lot lower than that :P)  I'm hoping that the photographer got more, so I'll post some up when they have been processed.