Today is a special day for me. This is the 3rd year I ran in our local Sleighbell race. 2 years ago was my first 5k. 2 years ago I was so tired after the race, I spent the next day in bed and took many Ibuprofen. 2 years ago, I was panting my way to a 32 something finish time. 2 yearsa go I know I walked part of the race.
Today I ran a 25:43. Today I did not need to take any Ibuprofen. Today, I ran the entire race and sprinted (my version) at the end. Today I feel good. What a difference 2 years can make. 2 years of running consistently 3-5 times a week, despite illness, injury, and weather.
It’s not just a difference of 7 minutes, it’s a difference of confidence and stoicism in the face of less than ideal body and weather. It’s knowing that you have committed and short of something cancelling the race, you are going to show up. My body feels strong and my mood is good.
Maybe you are new to running. Maybe you ran in years past but want to try again. Maybe you just want to read a blog post on running a 5k, no judgment here, everyone needs to start somewhere. This is the story of running my first 5k.
The first question you need to ask yourself is, “why should I run a 5k.” I don’t think there is a good answer but knowing your “why” will help keep you motivated. For some it is a way to lose a few pounds, for others, a chance to spend some time away from people and devices. Since this is my blog, I will go first and tell you why I ran my first 5k.
I actually ran 2 first 5ks which isn’t actually possible but I will explain. The first was never meant to be part of a larger running plan, my son was in a Montessori preschool and as an annual fundraiser, they had organized a 5k race. I was a local business owner and was one of the sponsors, a perk of which was a free race entry. As mentioned before, my son is a natual born runner and he “trained” with me. By trained I mean he ran next to me, talking the entire time while I gasped for air. I don’t think I ever even ran 3 miles until the day of the race, this is not the way to train for a 5k!
This first of 2 first 5k doesn’t really count in my book. I did finish and may have even placed (it’s a really small race!) and I was sore for several days afterwards. There was no plan and there was no commitment.
My Second 1st 5K
My interest in running was piqued about 6 months before my actual first 5k. My son was in middle school and was in the running club. As part of the running club all of the schools in the district participated in a spring 5k that runs through Colonial Williamsburg. The race is early in the morning and spring in Virginia can be unpredictable, this year is was a very hot race morning. My son was the only one who raced that year. I stood near the start line and as the runners passed, I felt an overwhelming mixture of emotions. I was brought to tears by the ROTC and military runners leading the race, many of whom held American flags as well as the wheelchair and stroller athletes. There were waves upon waves of kids, elementary, middle and high school all running together. I guess it was the together that got me. I felt so isolated and an “us and against the world” mentality that I was envious of people who were participating as a group. I was jealous of the runners. Proud and envious at the same time. I wished that could be me.
watching the start of the race, as a spectator
“I can’t run, I hate running, the last time I ran was when they made me run a mile for the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in high school, my organs aren’t well attached to my abdominal wall and they jostle too much when I run.”
I had repeated those things to myself and to others for so many years that I truly believed them. I also thought I was in pretty good shape, not overweight and I walked a bit, sometimes I even did a You Tube yoga video!
It was in the fall 3 years ago that my son brought home the flyer for the winter race in which the school participated. In a half joking way I said we should all run it. We signed up. We paid our monies and I put on what I thought were running shoes and headed out the door.
Which brings me to me feet. I had been having foot pain, likely from a neuroma, for a few years. The only shoe that seemed to help was the Ryka Graffik, super light weight and good arch support. This is what I started running in, today, this wouldn’t make it though a month of my running but at the time, it was good enough. You don’t need fancy shoes to get out there and get started! I ran in these shoes for several months before changing to a minimalist shoe discussed here. We live in a neighborhood with many hills, out house is at the bottom of one of those hills, it is a half mile of a steady incline from our house to the top of the main road. I made it about a quarter of a mile, I have no idea what my pace was, I wasn’t tracking my pace, my time or anything I was just putting one foot in front of the other!
My family laughed a little at me, I was more out of shape than I wanted to believe (did I mention I had just turned 40?) but I walked up the rest of the hill, turned around and ran back home. Downhill. I had about a month of what I will call practice because to me training implies a plan and there was no plan, only survival. My only goal was to finish. I may not have been in the best shape but I am very stubborn and perhaps too prideful, I would finish this race.
I have suffered from insomnia most of my life, mostly due to anxiety. I was so anxious leading up to this stupid 5k, I know it wasn’t the Olympics but I was really afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it. I slept little and poorly and woke up very early. It was freezing outside, literally freezing rain, about 30 degrees and sleeting. I knew from other parents that there was a lot of standing around outside before the race so we opted to leave the kids at home and head to the race ourselves. Miserable, cold, wet, nervous. I wasn’t sure what to wear, how many layers? How do I pin on this number? This all becomes important around mile 2 when I am so hot I am trying to take off my outer layer, which I have pinned to my inner layer, while running since I told myself that I wouldn’t stop no matter what. I planned to take it slow and steady and finish this race.
My husband and I huddled under the hospital carport to escape the wind and did some stretching, when it was time to line up, we left our coats near the breezeway and headed over. They had little signs for your anticipated time, I lined up in the 30-35 minute spot. I remember little about the first mile, it was kind of surreal to me, “you are actually running in a 5k, you are really doing it!” There was a a turn around near the 1 mile mark and as I headed back the other direction, I was surprised by how many people were behind me, despite my very slow pace.
I tend to run hot. I get really hot when I run. I didn’t know this yet and had put on gloves, ear muffs and 2 layers of long sleeves. Even at 30 degrees, this was too much. After the 2 mile mark, I pulled my outer layer over my head, while holding my phone and my not cordless headphones, wriggled one arm loose and discovered that I was pinned by my number to my inner shirt. I am still not sure how I undid all of this, I was able to free the pin and I must have repinned the bib, though with freezing fingers I think I only managed to get 2 back on. I tied my sweatshirt around my waist and pressed on. My husband later marvelled that I was able to do all of this while running and holding the above mentioned phone and headphones. I don’t know, as a mother we figure out all kinds of ways to get out of a jam. The good news is that all of this undressing and phone holding distracted me from the feeling that I was dying so it brought me another half mile closer to the finish line. As I made the final turn into the parking lot towards what I thought was the finish line, I was so disappointed to see there must be another parking lot loop to go as I couldn’t see the finish line. All I saw was another hill. I stopped for a second, then I heard my husband yelling, “Don’t stop the finish is just around this corner!” I wiped the snot on to my sleeve, mopped the rain from my eyes and pressed on. Though I had planned not to stop, I forgave myself, I had tried my best and finished the race. My time was a 32:35, a 10:31 mile pace. I placed 275 out of 575 runners/walkers. I was amazed to have been in the middle and impressed with all of the people coming out in this awful weather to do this thing together. I was part of the group, a crazy group of people raising money for Habitat for Humanity, cold and wet together.
I was looking back at my Runkeeper activities and I didn’t start using the ap until the week following this race. But I got right back out there and ran regularly despite the holidays and inspite of the weather.
My next race was even colder, taking place in the beginning of February 2018. My goal for this 5k was to be under 30 minutes. This race also featured a large uphill in the beginning, but as I had been running a similar hill from my house, it didn’t seem so bad, plus I got to finish on a down hill! My time for this second 5k was a 29:05, a 9:23 pace. I had shaved over a minute per mile in just over a month.
How I feel about cold weather running, I’m usually hot but I don’t want to be cold….
I tried to run every other day, usually 2 to 2.5 miles. I do not like to run on a treadmill so unless it was below 25 degrees or ice/snow on the ground, I ran outside. Being outside is probably what I enjoy most about running. I feel like an animal on the earth not a human in a cage. I know a lot of people need to run on treadmills due to work/family/weather issues but it takes much of the joy out of running for me.
My 3rd 5K,
At the beginning of this post, I talked about the mixture of joy/envy/pride I had watching that group of runners from all walks of like running in unison. This year, at the same race, on a beautiful and not hot spring day, I found my place with the people.
If you haven’t visited Colonial Williamsburg, you should. It is a unique place of living history, both in architecture and landscape. I love running here. Having a backdrop of the interpreters dressed in colonial garb next to the William and Mary students and the elementary student field trippers and tourists provides endless people watching opportunities.
The race begins adjacent to the William & Mary campus, winds through the campus and finishes on the historic Duke of Gloucester St. Williamsburg in the spring is beautiful and seeing everything come alive is invigorating. This time I was not a spectator, I was part of the messy, loud throng!
My Runkeeper clocked this course as a 3.2 (which it has in subsequent years) so I think it is slightly longer than a 5k, my time was a 27:54, an 8:44 min/mile pace. Nearly 5 minutes faster than my race a few months earlier.
The last 3 years hasn’t always been easy or fun. I have had my share of foot pain, wardrobe malfunctions and less than optimal performances. I haven’t yet run a 5k where after the first mile I am not vowing to never run again. Without fail, once the race is over, I am at the reception table picking up flyers for the next race. Running has brought me emotional peace, a sense of pride in my accomplishments I haven’t felt since my school days and shared experiences. with my family.
This is the story of my first (second first) 5k, In my next post I will give my unsolicited and likely unhelpful advice about running your first 5k!
You know how we all need someone to toot our horn? To make a small accomplishment feel like something worth sharing? I know I am often the first to dismiss my progress as “old lady running,” but in truth, I am proud of my achievements. Runkeeper and I go way back, I started tracking my runs about 3 years ago when my son came up with the hare-brained scheme to sign his family up for a local 5k. As a first-born child I am hooked on praise and concrete goals. Runkeeper (or any tracking app) gives you that instant feedback that the people-pleaser in me so craves.
Runkeeper does more than that for me, the little confetti animations when I achieve a new fastest pace in a week/month/fortnight etc breaks up the miles and gives me a second to reflect. The Richmond Marathon took place this last weekend and though I didn’t run, or even consider running the marathon, I know several people who did run the half-marathon and I have even considered trying it next year.
I have been working on a “training plan” using a more structured approach than my typical go out an run and see how I feel. For the past month, I have been doing one longer run a week, 5 or 6 miles at a slow pace, running for duration rather than speed. I have been shooting for around an hour and found this to be a very pleasant run, usually the run I enjoy most all week. Who would have thought a long run would have been my favorite? Not me.
I discussed my version of a “tempo run” here, I have tweaked this a bit. Once a week I run around my 5k pace, which I believe can be improved by a bit, as I find the adrenaline rush I get at the beginning of a race flusters me. I am trying to push myself more instead of my usual, lazy running.
I have incorporated sprint workouts into my training, I am sure the neighbors think I have lost my mind but I can really tell the difference in my endurance since starting these sprint runs. I am not that fast, I feel like I am really fast but Runkeeper would beg to differ. I run at about 7:30 pace for quarter miles at a time for 1-2 miles then finish with a 8:30 ish mile. I like these days least, but maybe in time I will learn to love them.
Yesterday, Runkeeper sent me the nicest email.
This run was my longest duration and my greatest distance and my largest elevation climb! That’s a lot of adjectives for one run! The best part is that I felt good running, not fast but that wasn’t my objective. I could have run faster as my last half mile was almost a minute faster than the rest of my run. I will fear no 10k!
3 years into my running journey, thinking about it makes me a little emotional. My kids are so much bigger than they were, looking at the pictures from our first race together it doesn’t seem possible that my son is now in high school. I have lost weight, though that wasn’t my goal, I sleep better and I have more confidence to tackle things that I know will be difficult. I will definitely write more about the insomnia thing, running has possibly saved my life in that respect.
Twinsies! Today I crossed over into a new level of married old person. I wore the same running shoes as my husband, the Saucony Kinvera 10. To be fair, they are different colors and to be even more fair, this is not the first pair of matching running shoes we have owned. We both had a love affair with our Merrell Bare Access trail shoes, he still wears his in races, I am afraid they contributed to my plantar plate injury.
My Saucony Kinvera 10 is a very pretty color, I am going to call it seafoam green.
I felt good running today, I ran at a good pace, not my fastest, but I ran each subsequent mile faster than the one before and wound up close to me 5k pace for a 4 mile run with lots of steep hills.
This is the 3 year anniversary of my running journey. My son signed us up for a Christmas school run, I tried to train as best I could. I think my time was 32 minutes for the 5k and I felt like I would die for the rest of the week, I mean walking down the stairs backwards because my quads hurt kind of die. My life has changed so much since then. The idea of running six miles for fun was something I couldn’t have conceived of at the time. I had foot pain before I ever started running, a neuroma, which made walking painful. My feet are still my “Achilles heel,” but I have learned some new tricks to help them out. Lacing is still the key to my foot comfort.
I kept the Saucony Kinvera 10 laced as they were from the factory, we’ll call this “normal” lacing. I posted earlier about my voyage into the world of “unconventional” lacing here. After 3 miles, I was getting numbness and tingling in my toes. I stopped and retied the left shoe, which is my problem foot (for now.) I threaded the laces unilaterally from the 4th and 5th hole up and then added the cinches at the ankle eyelet. This seemed to relieve most of the pinched feeling I was having.
They sure are prettier than my Hokas.
When I first put these shoes on, they felt like they rubbed on the inside of my heel. I wore them around the house for a while and it still seemed stiff in the inner heel. I was surprised that when I ran, I didn’t feel any rubbing in this area. I was also expecting more bounce as the foam on the Kinvera is “squishier” than the Hoka foam.
I will try them again, this was a good run, the weather was a little warmer too, so that helped!
Despite my low battery and lack of image loading, I earned 25 percent off!
Thanks RunKeeper, I will stick to my free tracking, but I do appreciate the offer and the encouragement!
To be fair, I had a few fast races this month and I have been trying to do my “sprints” or “tempo runs.”
Today was cold, I do not like to run on a treadmill so it will have to be in the low 20’s for that travesty to happen. I waited as long as I could, schedule wise, to run today. This February weather for me, I was not mentally or physically prepared, but I have 2 new shoes to try out.
brrrr
Today I tried the new Hokas. I have been running in the throwback Clifton 1 one, it has been the savior of my hammer toe, documented here. The Hoka Clifton 5 were less hideous than the shoes I already owned and were on sale for a mere $99! They boasted a knit finish/body/heel? I chose a less garish color and waited for their slow delivery.
Not neon. I believe it is called lichen.
I ran a slow first mile pretty much uphill ( my house is sadly at the bottom of a half-mile hill.) I then began my “sprint” work out. I have decided to try to run quarter miles as fast as I can, pausing between each to blow my nose (it was freezing) and regain my composure. I did this for a mile and then ran the last mile at my ideal 5k pace. It was a challenging run and I definitely felt stronger on my last mile. This could be a combination of my longer, 6 mile runs and the tempo runs.
As for the shoes, I think they are very comfortable when standing, I did not care for them on my run. I think the toe box is narrower than in the Clifton One 1 (so many ones!) I found my 3rd and 4th toes were getting numbness/tingling. I also felt like my heel was slipping. The material is stiffer than the Clifton 1 Ones and wasn’t as forgiving on my hammer toe. I prefer the lighter mesh on my old Hokas, they also seem to be lighter but that may be due to the frigid temperatures numbing my appendages.
I will try to run in them again but I think I will try putting new insoles into my old Hokas. Tune in next time when I cave to husband pressure and try the Saucony Kinvera 10, a running shoe that is the perfect crayola color of seafoam green!
Back to my Runkeeper kudos, I am slightly obsessive about tracking my runs. I don’t throw out any data unless it is something really disruptive like bringing in my neighbors trashcan and forgetting that I started my run. I have two more “major” races this year. My local run club has updated the grand prix standings and I still seem to be holding on to my coveted 40-49 plaque! I am hoping that my fastest pace in a month with translate to a new PR!
It’s been building to a slow simmer these last 43 years…
I have a rival. Does this mean I have a -rive-d? I didn’t know I had a Rival until the I ran a recent 5k in which I made pleasant chit chat with anyone who would make eye-contact with me. There is a YOUNG woman, about my age who had introduced herself to me at a 5k earlier in the year. She actually was the one who encouraged me to sign up for my first 10k.
I had been making my attempts at “tempo runs” so I expected to do well on this flat course on a cool morning. And I did! I set a PR which to others may have been slow but to me, it was a very, very fast, almost supersonic 25:52. I won’t mention that my son who finished in 17:20 was digging into a bagel while I was in mile 2.
I joined the local run group because I thought it would give me discounts on races. It doesn’t. But membership was cheap and joining something in real life not the internet has been on my to-do list for a decade or so. Apparently there is a 40-49 women’s age group award that is highly sought after. The recognition also includes what I am told is a handsome plaque with the engraved race times for the year of the feat.
I am still of the mindset where I am just so pleased that I can finish a race that I can’t quite conceive of being in competition. God willing, that handsome plaque will be hanging on my wall next year!
Today was warmer than it has been and sunny, I took advantage of this by taking a slower paced but longer distance run.
My goal was to run for about an hour and this worked out to exactly 6 miles. The funny thing is, I really start to feel good after mile 4. I am not sure if this is my body going into protective mode, thinking I am dying and sending me off towards the bright light with an extra surge of serotonin, but I feel good. I always think I am an idiot for trying to run in the first mile, I hate everyone in the second mile and by the third I start to feel ok. Maybe that’s why I don’t love 5ks, I spend the majority of the time angry! I need to work on this.
I spent much of the last 2 years nodding whenever someone talked about a tempo run. My run consists mainly of trying not to die and looking strong when I run past a neighbor, and snot rocketing off in the woods when nobody is watching. There isn’t a lot of planning. I go out and see if I feel like running fast-ish or slow-ish. It all usually depends on what and when I last ate. Sometimes I stop (don’t tell anyone, but Runkeeper knows all.) I have now broken the 26 minute mark in a 5k race. My last race was a 25:52, Nike will be calling any day now.
I have decided that it is time I work on my speed. While I am still young. I am still being beaten in races by women in their 50’s so I think there is a glimmer of hope. I am still the slowest in my family. My 10 year old daughter beats me by a minute or more, but she is a freak. My son is now running high school cross country and is hovering in the 17’s. So speed is relative, much like the speed of light.
I had to google tempo run, since my husband has been telling me about his for a few months and I have been nodding…. So my interpretation of a tempo run is probably not legit so do not take any advice from me.
I do not know what I am doing, I seem to be getting faster, I make no claims about my level of expertise.
Here is what I did today: Interval training, not a Tempo run
I ran up my steep hill, about 0.6 of a mile at a very relaxed 9:20 pace.
I stopped, looked around to make sure nobody was watching because I still feel like I look like Phoebe running.
Not actual footage but add in a snot rocket and we are getting close.
I then ran 0.25 at the fastest pace I felt like I could run a quarter of a mile, which for me was about 7:10 (my son considers this his recovery pace, I call it my recovery room pace.) I stopped at the quarter, did some deep breathing and put my hands on my hips. Then off like a rocket I went again, this time closer to half a mile and a 7:30 pace. I stopped and ran down another very steep hill and then back up the very steep hill at a more normal 8:30 pace, at this point I had run close to 2 miles and I decided it was time to put on my inspirational music for my last mile (not 8 mile) and see what I could do.
As Eminem’s Lose Yourself played, I ran home. All the way home. I am unsure of the pace for the first quarter as the split is calculated as an 8:08 but was combined with part of my slower uphill run but my last 0.7 was a 7:16! “Feet fail me not,” indeed. Not bad for a 43 year old who never ran before she was 40!
“Smoke quickly filled the room” is a dramatic yet accurate way to begin this story. I was wandering through our yard, checking for groundhog damage and picking the last of my grapes. This sounds much more interesting than it really was, I have but one concord grape vine and this year at the summer solstice, the animals surrounding my house gathered round and feasted upon everything I had planted this spring. When the feasting was done, I was left with a few grapes and strawberry stumps, my lilies, tomatoes, beans and roses were trashed. I threw some netting over the grape vine to keep the deer from getting all of the grapes and forgot about them. Last weekend I realized there were quite a few grapes and called the children round to harvest, my teenage boy had no interest so my daughter and I set forth to fill our ziploc bag.
I was about to update my readers (though Google analytics tells me that I have no readers) about a decent cake I made. A few posts back, I discussed my ineptitude for baking but I am capable of occasionally making a cake that doesn’t look like it fell from a great height onto the pavement. Occasionally.
Every year, I ask my beloved children what cake they would like for their birthdays. No matter how ridiculous, I find a way to make this cake. As they have matured, I thankfully no longer have to figure out how to make a race car or a bunny shaped cake.
Bunny is a little scary, car doesn’t look like it would pass inspection….
This year, my daughter’s request was to have a chocolate cake with coconut-vanilla frosting. I used my trusted Ina Garten recipe for Beatty’s cake. I am not sure if this is pronounced Betty as in Crocker or Beady as in Richard Gere’s eyes or Beatty as in Shirley Maclaine’s brother. This recipe borders on too many ingredients and steps, hence the mind wandering about the pronunciation.
Beady, Betty, Beatty?
Anyway, I made jam, which as I have learned is the lazy person’s jelly. I only had enough precious grapes for serving size of jam. I found a recipe that involved as few ingredients and steps as possible since my attention span is inversely proportional to both ingredients and steps.
It tasted delicious, my husband claimed it gave him a stomach ache but the rest of us enjoyed jam with dinner and breakfast the next morning. I look forward to making enough jam for 6 people next year, provided I can stop the wild rumpus from eating all of my bounty on the solstice.
Back to the room filling with smoke. I intended to “brown” some ground beef. I find that I usually don’t pre-heat my pan enough and end up boiling my meat. Mmm, boiled meat. Eat up kids! My pan was hot. Too hot. I knew as soon as I added my meat that it was not only “browning” but burning. I turned down the heat and opened a door to allow the cool, 90 degree breeze to carry away the smoke before the alarms went off. In my haste to move around the “browning” meat, I sent a few raw pieces airborne and onto the backsplash. Not quite a fail but ironic as I was about to write about my cake and jam conquest. Hubris.
Banana bread is my nemesis
This brings me to my next baking fail, the pile of banana bread. I had to use spell check to figure out how to spell banana, I still think it should have 3 n’s but google tells me it does not. Banana bread should be vaguely bread-like, maybe not sandwich bread-like but some sort of slice-able bread. As mentioned in other posts , https://learningnewtricks.com/index.php/2019/05/20/i-am-not-a-baker/
directions are usually not my thing.
I was making a banana bread and tried to make it “healthier” by omitting a bit of sugar and substituting roughly half of the “evil gluten flour” with “lamb of god almond flour.” Some say it was too humid that day, some say I was in a rush to pick up one or the other kid and took the sad banana pile out of the oven too early, others say my kitchen is haunted.
I present to you, my banana pile! Eat up kids! Sometimes I can say it still tasted good but in this case, it tasted like baking soda.
Don’t mind if I do!The rinds are the best part.
My garden is now facing the first frost, even though my veggies were a huge failure this year and my one serving of jam was a feeble showing, my flowers were beautiful!
More words I never thought I would type. Even after I started running but still did not refer to myself as a runner, I said something like, “3.1 miles is as far as I will ever run, you would have to be crazy to run further than that.”
I ran two 8k races last year, including the Busch Gardens “Christmas Town Dash,” which may have been the precursor to my “mysterious foot ailment” written about in this post.
I was surprised that I could run 5 miles when I usually feel like dying after one, let alone 3.1. I realized that I actually liked these longer runs, I paced myself better, started slower and felt stronger. I think I could have run them faster, I was around a 9:15 min pace for the 8k, but I was also running with my 9 year old daughter ( she rocked it!)
There is something about the pace and the sprint feeling of running a 5k that gives me anxiety. When I was preparing for this 10k, a race I decided to run less than a week before it happened, I didn’t set a specific time goal. I wanted to finish!
I had dreams about the little golf cart (turns out it is a bike) sweeping me off the course when they had to reopen the road to the public. I did not want to be swept away on a golf cart. Or a bike. I ran 5 miles the day before the race and felt like I did a pretty good job on a trail that was hilly and rocky and resigned myself to a 6:45 am race day registration the next day.
I hear the best way to train for a race is to set an arbitrary time and hope that you don’t get “swept away” by the course marshall. I am not even sure if this is a real phrase or if I dream/nightmared being a golf-cart-driving-course-marshall-sweeping me away.
I don’t like to plan things too far ahead which confuses people as I am pretty uptight and type A but I now realize this has more to do with wanting to keep my options open for any and all variables such as weather, illness, mood etc. I do the same thing with travel plans, I hate to plan too far in advance and prefer to “wing it” with a rough itinerary.
Back to My First 10k. It was awesome. It was an unusually cool morning for the time of year, I told myself it was ok to do 10 min miles, but I really wanted to be in under 1 hour. I started strong but tried not to go out too fast, the adrenaline rush is strong in me! My first mile was a 9:20, much faster than I had “trained” for this distance and with thoughts of golf carts sweeping me away, I slowed to a 9:30, a pace I stuck to until mile 5 where I slowed even more to a 9:40. I had also given myself permission to stop and rest/walk/drink water during the race. I don’t usually stop in races but I stop all of the time when I run for fun… I like to run with my daughter so I can say it was her idea but I know it’s probably because I feel like stopping!
I did not stop even once. I did not need water, I felt like I was on a conveyor belt to the finish and managed to get to a 9:17 pace for the final quarter mile! Average pace was 9:33 and I finished in under an hour, 59:45. I actually chatted with the woman who I was following for 4 miles, staring at the back of her head in a zen-like fashion. I probably ran slower the last two miles because of it, but I think it made the race more enjoyable and helped distract me from the fact that I HAD NEVER EVER RUN THIS FAR!
I also ran this race alone, I didn’t think this was a good distance for my daughter, my son had been doing pretty intense high school cc conditioning and my husband was recovering from an injury. It was just me and it felt good! My dear husband drove me to the race and cheered me on at the end, I think I surprised him with my cheerfulness in the home stretch.
I am still “learning new tricks” but I think that you would have to be crazy to ever run more than 6.2 miles…. If you want to try something new, sign up for a 10k! You will love it!
Sounds like a self-help book. I had two instances this week where someone told me my running had inspired them. This is something that flatters me in a way nothing else has, I was never an “athlete” and to have people tell me I have made them want to run gives me a sense of purpose.
My very nice neighbor with two young children asked me for opinion about running shoes. I warned her that my experience is limited but that I love my Merrells, I love them more than I ever thought I could love a shoe. I love them so much that I have a second identical pair and I am considering buying a few more (they are discontinued.)
These shoes are so light weight you forget you are even wearing shoes! (But you are so take them off in my house.) I have very high arches and always thought I needed shoes with heavy-duty arch support. I am not sure how I came across these “minimalist” running shoes but they saved my feet. As mentioned in this previous post, I had a Morton’s neuroma and when I wore these shoes, my pain disappeared! I wear them a full size larger than my normal shoes size and to date, I have not lost a single toe nail!
With my latest “hammer-toe-itis” I have tried an alternate lacing technique, described here.
Would you trust someone who tied their shoes like this? I wouldn’t.
It looks like a blind and thumb-less person got tangled up in my laces but it really helped take the pressure off the top of my foot. Getting the laces off my pressure point stopped the numbness and pain. Surprisingly, no one has mentioned this crazy lacing or they were too polite to stare.
I love the Merrell Bare Access Arc 4 shoe so much that I bought my daughter a pair from the outlet clearance rack! Could this be any cuter?
mini (malist) me
Back to my story of inspiring those around me. My sweet neighbor said that watching me and my family (we all run) made her want to run again! Today at Harris Teeter, I was wearing one of my many 5k t-shirts as I was planning to do some yard work and I don’t dress up much when I am not at work. The checker said something like “I wish I could do something like that.” I wasn’t sure if she meant walk around with no make-up and unshowered but she said, “run a 5k or 8k or anything.”
I blushed, because even though I am old, I still can’t take a compliment. I told her, “You can definitely do it! “I didn’t start running until I was 40!”
I had been waiting my whole life to say this to someone. Then she said the most wonderful thing I have ever heard…
“You are over 40? You don’t look like you could be over 40.”
Maybe she was lying but I don’t care, all of this running and Tru Niagen is paying off!
You can learn new tricks over 40, my times have continued to improve. I will never be an elite runner, but I can run 3 to 5 miles at a respectable pace is proof that we can get better as we get older.
While we are talking about mini me, here is the painting I reprinted to give to all of the father’s in my life for Father’s Day. This is my daughter and husband at the beach (obviously. ) I loved her holding his hand, I also liked the tint giving the painting a vintage look.
