Twilight 12K 2017 – Race Recap

I was hopeful, but I couldn’t quite pull off another PR this last Friday at the Twilight 12K.

Two years ago, I was 7 months postpartum and ran the 12K in 48:26. This year I ran 27 seconds slower in 48:53. This race did occur just six days after racing the Pulsator 10K this year, so that didn’t give me much recovery time. Two years ago I had two weeks in between the two races.

throwback Adidas top (from a thrift store) | Oiselle competition brief | racing flats

For the record (and those of you who don’t live here), this race does not take place at true twilight or midnight. Our sun sets at almost 11:30 p.m. right now, but the race actually starts at 7 p.m.

I felt quite good throughout the entire race. I ran by myself for much of the race, which is kind of lonely, but thankfully I am good at pushing my pace and maintaining an appropriately-hard pace. It was a picture-perfect evening–perfect racing temperature in my opinion.

After taking a look at my splits from 2 years ago and comparing them to this year, I realized that most of my splits were actually faster this year, and I had a net time of 14 seconds faster this year compared to two years ago (through mile 7). However, when you look at the distance traveled, I ran a tenth of a mile more this year, which is why my overall time was slower this year. Let’s break it down.

Splits from 2015:

1 – 6:16
2 – 6:38
3 – 6:34
4 – 6:38
5 – 6:24
6 – 6:33
7 – 6:42
0.4 – 6:44 pace

Total: 7.4 miles | 48:26 | 6:30 average pace

Splits from 2017:
The number in parenthesis is the number of seconds faster (-) or slower (+) compared to two years ago.

1 – 6:12 (-4)
2 – 6:37 (-1)
3 – 6:20 (-14)
4 – 6:31 (-7)
5 – 6:26 (+2)
6 – 6:37 (+4)
7 – 6:48 (+6)
0.5 – 6:40 pace

Total (stats from my GPS watch): 7.5 miles | 48:53 | 6:31 average pace

throwback Adidas top (from a thrift store) | Oiselle competition brief | racing flats

My overall pace was only one second per mile slower this year. And when add up the net time differences between the two years, I was 14 seconds faster through mile 7 at least. Plus with an overall faster pace for the last portion of the race, that leads me to conclude that if I would have run the same distance, I would have had a faster time this year. Either I didn’t do a very good job running the tangents or the course was changed. I did notice in the 2015 photo, the finish line is at a different place than it was this year. (But that’s not to say that other parts of the course were slightly changed as well.)

Anyway, with that all said, I feel like I had a solid race effort, and I feel like I am getting stronger each week. I have really only been training consistently for about 6 weeks, so I feel like I’ve made quite a bit of progress in those six weeks.

I love that Cullen is finally understanding what it means for me to run a race. Here he’s standing (in the blue), waiting for me to finish.

I’ve been doing a lot of coaching this week, which is why it took me a while to get this race recap completed. Summer running and racing is in full-swing, but I am loving it!

Hi, I'm Michelle

I love running around the lakes of Minnesota, running after my two boys, and racing anything from the 5K to the marathon. I have been blogging here since 2010 when I ran my first marathon. I finally secured my sub-3 hour marathon after trying for 8 years.

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