(photo: Ben!)
so, it probably wasn't the best idea to spend the last two days on my feet 8 hours a day, painting and cleaning my condo to get it ready for sale. and it also wasn't the best that it rained this morning, and it's humid as hell. but whatever. my goal was 28:00 but I said I'd be happy under 30:00.
i didn't warm up at all. the little "program" before the race took almost as long as the race itself, and featured Miss Chicago as emcee. i'm learning that the pre-race song-and-dance is really just something to suffer through. we're there to run, and it's great that it's for a cause and all, but you already have our money... do we really need a lecture about the issue? either way, Ben was nice enough to get up early and come cheer me on, one of like 5 spectators on the course. he and i poked fun at the "program" together.
the first mile led me to rename the race "puddlejumper 5k." it went south on a trail that was covered in puddles and we were all running on the grass, cross-country style. it was muddy. i was zig-zagging all over the place, leading my gizmo to call the 1 mile mark about a tenth of a mile early.
i had the gizmo set to race mode, and it had a little pace guy and me chasing him the whole time. from the start, the pacer was ahead, and i never caught up. it was pushing for 9:00 miles, but it just didn't happen. in mile 2 the humidity set in, and it sort of kicked my ass. my heart rate was reasonable- in the 160's- but i just couldn't push much harder. it was miserable. people started walking around 2miles in but i didn't let myself.
my gizmo had me finish a healthy distance before the actual finish line (about a block early) but gave me a 29:20. who knows what my chip time is, should be posted later. the clock said 11:something when i hit the first mile, though my garmin said it was a 9:24 mile. so, whatever.
it just seemed like a lot of work and fanfare and money and such to run 5k. i run 5k just about every morning. it's nice to have a chip time, but today taught me that it doesn't mean much unless conditions allow. onward.
(UPDATE: chip time says 30:49. um, there's no way. my guess is the course was long. to check though, i hit up the gmap-pedometer, and came up with this. yeah, it was long. so, after getting up early and paying and driving i still don't have a good 5k chip time. but the garmin was right. so i'll call it a 29:20.)
(Photo from Ben) I got home from the WEMS race at 10:45pm. At 7:45am on Sunday was a 5k race that I did last year, and I sort of wanted to run it just to beat last year's time. I haven't done running speedwork in more than three weeks and I've been running slowly lately to save for my bike workouts, but I knew I could do it. Last year's chip time was 30:49, but I'm convinced that the race was measured long because my gizmo gave me a 5k time of 29:20. Either way, if I could wake up, I could beat it. I decided that if I was awake, I'd go. I didn't set an alarm.