5K Racing is Hard but Fun

OK so on April 14 I race in 5k. It's one that is held every year and is good for charity. I am coaching a group of folks who are trying to get faster 5k times this year. They are doing so well. At this race they all improved by about 3 to 4 minutes. Quite amazing, I'm sure they were holding something back at the beginning of the program. Of course, back then they did not know their abilities so our training has really taught them to push themselves outside their comfort zones.

Anyway back to me. I raced my first 5k in over a year. Mainly because last year I trained and finished 6 marathons in 14 months. Now for some that may not seem like much of a feat, but those 6 marathons have brought my total marathons to 7! I'm running one in every state. No, I'm not a member of any of the official 50 in 50 clubs. I'm doing this for me and I can set the rules as I go.

OK back to the 5k. I ran it pretty fast considering it's been so long since I've trained for that distance. I really didn't know what to expect. Now, it was not a PR but was only about 15 seconds from a PR. Wow, that's the first time I did the math on that. But, it's true, only 15 seconds off. The kool thing about this fact is that I felt strong enough to run a little faster during mile 2. Instead of running faster, though, I settled in behind one of my running buddies. Her marathon times are faster than mine and when we run together during the week her easy pace is always faster than mine. Besides that she has much more racing experience than me so I thought it smart to settle in behind her rather than risking running too fast in mile 2 and not having anything left for mile 3.

I may have worn off my welcome for a little bit because when I turned it on near the end she did not stay right with me. I was expecting to see her breeze past me at the last second but she did not. During our race we had another friend come up and start pacing us. He is much faster than both of us and found it quite easy to jump in front and keep the pace. I know I have to get to his pace before I have a shot at qualifying for Boston. I know I've got it in me but I need to lose about 25-30 pounds before he and I are at the same weight. Still working on that, of course.

The only problem is that now I'm 1200 miles away from home visiting a terminally ill family member and I'm not eating right at all. I know my progress has completely frozen even though I've been keeping my running up. I would hardly call it running, more like jogging. 9:20-9:50 pace for 7 miles yesterday. I have not been running yet today but I expect to only run about 5 miles. I'm feeling pretty lazy.

Longest blog yet for me and still no one has been reading them. It's OK. I have not given the location of this blog to any of my friends or family. I half expect someone to find my site on their own and start reading it because something here interest them. We'll keep watching. If in about two more weeks or so no one finds this site then I'll start sending it out to my running buddies so they can have something boring to read when they need to fall asleep.