travels, races, and other musings

5k with a cold I came down with a cold on Saturday night with a scheduled 5k race on Sunday morning. Sunday morning I was feeling a little crummy, but not too bad so I decided to go for it. Besides, I had talked Roger and Dru into this one so I didn't want to bail out (plus I already paid and picked up my race packet). We arrived and picked up our timing chips. I'm really horrible at sticking those things on my shoes. They always flop around. How many races at this point and I can't get the stupid timing chip on right? It was pretty cold (about 45 degrees) so we were all wearing long sleeves. Dru and I wore capri type pant things. Basically ankle-length loose running shorts. She didn't have warmer running gear so I loaned her some of mine. We tried to keep warm by doing some fast walking around the track where the race started, then we stretched a bit before heading to the start line. I had a hanky stuffed in my pocket that I had to keep pulling out to blow my nos...

My First 10k I made it through my first 10k yesterday. My original estimation was 1 hour and 15 minutes and I made it in 1 hour, 12 minutes, 37 seconds, which I'm very happy with. I actually don't have all that much to say about the race. Basically I just kept running! I tried to run fairly conservatively so that I would ensure I had enough energy to make it through the whole 6 miles. Between mile 4 and 5 I had a strange burst of energy and ran quite quickly for a few minutes, which felt really good. At the end, when I came towards the finish, I ran as fast as I could and gave that last bit of energy to a sprint. Here are my split times using my GPS watch. I tried to hit it right at the mile markers, but you'll see some are slightly off (in particular, I got distracted at the water stop at mile 2). Mile 1: 1.01 miles in 10:23 minutes, 10:19/mi average Mile 2: 1.09 miles in 12:46 minutes, 11:41/mi average Mile 3: .93 miles in 11:18 minutes, 12:12/mi average Mile 4...