Spark Your Heart - Run

Although I ran the beginning of the course for my warm-up, what I didn't notice was that just after the start on a grassy field, the course funneled into quite a bottleneck. There was rather a large crowd running, and I didn't pay any particular attention to where I was located in the group at the start. After we got started, I noticed that my pace just moving along with the crowd was about 10:30, much slower than I would have chosen. It took some attention to pass people and establish my preferred pace.
Also, I was debating whether my priority was to just run my race or to stick with C, since she had exhibited such anxiety. Not to worry; she pulled ahead of me and I didn't try to keep up. At mile 2, however, her ankles started to bother and she had to walk for awhile. I ran on, and after finishing was concerned that she might have given up and walked the rest of the way. But she persisted, and finished a couple of minutes later. (And was very pleased to be 7th in her AG out of 17.)

On an unfamiliar course, check it out during the warm-up for possible bottlenecks and if there are any, position myself further up in the pack so people have to run around me instead of the opposite.

Ate my Recovery bar & Fizz, collected my ribbon.
Hurried home so we could get to the Pet Parade on time!
Later we went stand-up paddleboarding at one of the Cascade Lakes.
Never a moment to stretch.


Altitude.
Bottleneck at the start.
Maybe I only gave 98% instead of 100?