Grapes for Grace - Omaha, NE

Grapes for Grace 5K/10K at Soaring Wings Winery in Springfield, NEThe race wasn’t slated to start till 3 PM and in the morning the weather called for 95% of T-storms at 2 PM and beyond – BOO! As the day progressed we decided we at least wanted to get our race packets (t-shirt included) and free wine! We (my mom, dad, sister, boyfriend and myself) arrived quite early but the weather looked to be on the up and up. My aunt and uncle decided not to chance the weather so my mom was going to run the 5k under my aunts name and my sister took over my uncles registration since she did not register (although she claims she did) :-)

The winery was on a beautiful hill overlooking the vineyards and farm country with great fall colors.

Pre-race stretches

Beautiful scenery - minus the look on AA's face :-)

Not used to this terrain!

 It was windy so we sought shelter inside and in the car. 

Passing time in the car

After a long wait – we were called to the start lane and given instructions and the run-down of the course. It looked to be only about 50 of us or so lined up (guessing the weather scared some away). The beginning was a sharp downhill through the vineyard and cornfields to get to the MoPac North trail where both the 5K and 10K turnaround points were. AA and I were running the 10K and my sister and mom were doing the 5K. We high fived – and we were off! The first mile of the course was hard. I forgot my ankle brace and had to be super careful about my footing since you were running through high grass, cornfields, mud and everything in between. My goal for the race was 10:45 pace and to take it easy. I started off about 10:30 and was happy. Once we got to the trail it was much nicer. A firm packed gravel was much nicer to run on. Before I knew it the 5K runners turned around and I found myself completely alone. 

Mom and Molly 5K finishing together :-)

I often wondered if I was running the right way, but there was no where I could have gone wrong. As it turns out there were only 15 people running the 10K so that explained it. I had my watch on so once I hit the 3.1 I was going to run around anyways. At about 2.6 miles I started to see a group of people heading back towards me. AA and I exchanged another high-five and I was feeling OK. I grabbed a quick sip at the turnaround and was off. For only being at 3 miles I wasn’t feeling great at that point but knew I still had 3 left in me. At about 4 miles another runner came up beside me. It turned out he was just out for a jog and came across the race. We ended up running about a mile together and he picked up my pace to 9:45 and he ended up finishing the race and then entering to get some wine! The last mile was hard on the terrain again and I slowed down to 10:45. You had to finish UP a hill which was hard, but I ended finishing at 1:04:14. This is a pace of 10:22 which is better than I expected - but I think that has to do with the lower elevation compared to Denver :-)

Running up the hill, I swear its bigger than it looks!

That ended up being 2nd in my age group out of 5! Even though I finished 12th of 15 overall :-) All in all a tough race with the beginning and end, but fun to race in another state! 

Pace and only at 1000' elevation

Afterwards we collected our wine glass and started the free samples. There was live music, but the musician wasn’t playing, rather she was sharing the Lord’s words – which was fine, but I was not expecting this and really just wanted some music (played before hand was pretty good!) The vineyard had both beer and wine. The overall consensus was the beer was decent but the wine was not. If I lived in the area, I would run it again. It’d be neat if they made a trail from winery to the actual trail – and they stuck to just music.

Post race sweat (Molly, Mom, me, AA)

Jazz hands....is AA confused?

Stay tuned for my pre-Boulder half marathon analysis :-)