First I need to talk about last Saturday. The OMG I'm so sick Saturday. I woke up with every intention to run 6 miles. But the second I got out of bed I knew that was not going to happen. Everything hurt. I thought it was from a fantastic run I had the day before so I got some coffee and sat down for a while. Then all of the sudden it hit me. My temperature started rising. I started getting the shakes and I was unbelievably tired. I spent the rest of the day in and out of sleep with a temperature hovering around 102.
Easter dinner was supposed to be at my house, but I nixed that pretty quickly. I had high hopes for Sunday, but they were pretty futile as Sunday sucked worse than Saturday. Sunday my temp was in 104 land and I slept most of that day too. FUN! I could barely stand up. Then my throat started hurting. A LOT.
My fever broke Sunday night and I started antibiotics on Monday for strep throat. I stayed home in bed for Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday the antibiotics had done their thing and I was feeling human enough to go back to work, but I knew that there was nothing in the tank for any sort of running.
I would have run on Thursday but my work and child care schedules were having none of that. By the time Friday rolled around I decided to save it all for today.
Today I ran my first 5k since 2004.
 |
| This was a great race. It was the culmination of a 12 week running program designed to get young girls running. |
I woke up this morning ready to go. I wanted to run so bad! The weather was fan-flipping-tastic. Sunny skies, cool temps. I ran this race solo so I was able to wander around and check out all of the pre-race activities. We started at the Durham Bulls Ball Park and quickly headed over the the Forest Hills section of Durham. There were a few moderate hills but over all it felt pretty flat with some nice down hill sections (my fav!).
Even though I had my Soleus on me I tried to avoid looking at it. I wanted to run by feel and not be freaked out if I saw a faster pace. So I was surprised that when I looked down for the first time I was already a mile and a half into the race. I was feeling really good. Immediately after that we turned a curve and the water stop was right there. I walked through the water stop to drink and blow my nose (hello allergies, nice to see you!) before taking off again.
I was grateful to run through sections of Forest Hills without many hills. This area was killer in the Half last year. There was one pretty decent sized hill just after 2 miles just as we were making our way onto the American Tobacco Trail. I made it up the hill, but allowed myself to walk for 15 seconds to recover. After that it was just a final push to the finish.
My "A" goal for this race was 33 minutes. I have been running at 11min/mile pace lately and I wanted to run this race at that pace without stopping too much. My watch time was 33:54. After coming off of a week without running and a gnarly sickness, I am really happy with that. Official results don't get posted until Monday (WTH?).
Overall, it was a great race experience and definitely of some of the feel-good endorphins flowing.
 |
| Cheese ball self portrait at the start. Totally Badass. |
Edited to add: Official time was 33:48. #131/266 of the timed runners.
No comments:
Post a Comment