Monday, May 30, 2011

Conquering the 10Kato

After a 6-month hiatus from road races (an eternity if you love running as much as I do), I finally broke the seal on the 2011 racing season with the 10Kato Memorial Day Run this morning. I'm not sure why I took so much time off from racing, but it's good to be back.

Despite having ran everything from 5K's to marathons in the past, I was actually kind of nervous at the start of 10Kato. Long training runs have been sporadic at best for me this spring (I've been doing a lot more biking than running), and if that wasn't enough, I pulled my groin playing softball last week.

I've spent most of the last few days icing and doing some light stretching with the hopes of healing up enough to run. Honestly, my main goal was to finish race without making the injury worse. Besting my time from two years ago was a distant secondary goal.

At the risk of overlapping content-wise with a column I plan on writing for tomorrow's paper about the race, I'll keep my blog post relatively brief. However, I will say this about the race: I was pleasantly surprised.

Despite struggling with the humidity and actually having to (gasp!) stop and walk a few times in the last couple miles, I finished in 40:48, placed 10th overall and beat my old time by more than 20 seconds. I definitely did not see that happening when a group of volunteers shot me a series of "get moving, you wimp" glares as I walked past them.

I guess this is a sign that I need to get out and do more road races. It obviously wasn't my best run in terms of pacing, but it was a blast nonetheless and I still get a rush when the finish line comes into view.

Congrats to all the other runners and walkers who participated in the race! It was good to see you all out on the trail!

*My coworker Amanda also partook in the 10Kato festivities, completing the 2-mile walk while wearing jeans and makeup (a bold strategy attire-wise). Her blog post on it can be viewed here.

1 comment:

 

yaz