Run for Your Mother

Running

Last year I ran my first race in a 5k in my home town.  At the time I hadn't been running for even a year.  After trying to run longer distances, I had backed off to just running 3.2 miles 5-6 times a week in order to have a cardiovascular aspect to my gym workout.  I choose to run the 5k because my son was willing to run it with me, I wanted to support local running events, and I had never been in a race before.  Since it was on Mother's day I checked with the wife and she gave the thumbs up.

That was a very windy run, and no matter that a study reported that wind isn't a factor unless you run faster than 7 minute miles.  I can tell you wind was a factor that day.  I was exhausted, and had no speed for most of that run.  I was so disgusted with my time and lack of endurance that I went to the gym and ran another 3 miles on the treadmill.  That was the day I decided to pursue increasing my miles again.

This year the event organizers had added a 10k race and I, with the permission of the mother of my children, signed up for it.  Now that I am running 60+ mile weeks, I figured I didn't have to worry about not having enough endurance.  However, since the back injury, I hadn't been running many sub-9 minute miles.  I wasn't sure if I could even break an hour run time.

Last year I drove to the start of the event.   This year I did a warm up walk/run.  It was all of 2 miles, perfect.  I signed in, got my bib number, and did the occasional jog around the track (it starts at a stadium) as I waited for the race to start.  I wanted to stay warmed up because my back issue appeared to have migrated to my right iliotibial tract.

The 5k and 10k started together, with the people running the 10k expected to run two laps.  During the first mile, I felt I was running too fast, and looking down at my Garmin I saw 7 minute, 40 seconds, so I slowed down a little.  That first mile ended being a 8:16.  The next two miles dropped to 8:42, and 8:36.  At the end of the first lap I was catching up to a teenager who was dragging, but picked up when they heard me coming.  I sprinted for the 5k finished line, but youth won out.  It probably wasn't the smartest thing for me to do since I had another 5k to run.

The next 3 miles I ran 8:40, 8:53, and 8:36.  The last mile demonstrating my pick up as I headed into home stretch.  The last 0.29 miles was at 8:22.  My first 10k and thus an automatic PR of 54:11.  A small race, no chip timer, and still no official results.  Nevertheless, a much better pace than my 30:40 5k a year ago, and certainly faster than 1 hour.  I thought at the end of the race that this was a sure sign of my recovery, and I should have no problem keeping my half-marathon time at Capitola/Santa Cruz scheduled for the following week under 2 hours...

Culinary

Mother's day shopping revealed a lot of Rib Eye pairs put together and trimmed into the shape of a heart?  There were also a surfeit of lobster tails.  I grilled up some surf and turf for my wife.