As forecast, we had awesome running weather race morning. In my pre race post, I mentioned wanting to run smart to avoid injury in order to not miss any training for my upcoming January endurance weekend. More on that later.
With my family living in Louisiana, I only get to run this race every other year in order that I can make it back home in time for Thanksgiving lunch the years that my mom has everyone over. I ran this event for the first time in 2007 on an even colder morning. That year, around 4200 people participated in either a 1 mile kids run, a 5 mile run, a 3 mile teen run or a 3 mile walk. This year they had 5500 people participating. Pretty impressive for a home town event.
The local YMCA puts on this event. I have been able to obtain a Heart & Health Grant through my employer to further support the sponsor. This year we had seven people from my company participating in one of the events.
I ended up having a good race. I watched the kids 1 mile race which started 1/2 an hour before my 5 mile race. That put my warmup a little later than usual. I entered the start line area from the back right from my warmup. I weaved my way through lots of people to get at what I thought was a good starting area. In hindsight, I should have kept weaving a while longer. I often forget that these lower mileage events have lots of first time or people that don't run regularly. I spent probably my first 2 miles zig zagging through runners of many different paces before the race thinned out somewhat. About that time, I felt something rubbing both my achilles. Turns out it was the zippers from my running tights that were rubbing my skin. It wasn't a factor in a 5 mile race; it would've been raw had I run a half or full marathon. Simply tucking my socks under the tights would've solved the problem; this may come in handy for a future long distance event.
I ended up running a 37:57, 7:35 pace for the 5 miles. My pace was definetely slower than the Nike Human Race 10k that I ran in October. I finished that 6.2 miler at an average pace of 7:39 but I hobbled in at the end of that race with a pulled left calf muscle. I enjoyed the post race pancake breakfast, visited with friends and then headed home to pack for my Louisiana trip. I got back in town Sunday afternoon and ran a 5 miler that evening. My legs felt fine even though the weather was balmy Sunday. Monday morning I woke up with a sore throat and 6 days later I'm now hacking up colorful stuff. I have no miles logged since Sunday. My legs are ready to go but this cold/bronchial funk has me sidelined anyway.
I may try and run 5 miles or so Sunday just to see how things feel; I have a treadmill stress test scheduled Wednsesday morning that I should be able to keep. Friday I fly to Jackson, MS to run a 1/2 Saturday morning. Sounds like it will be another run smart event as I don't feel like I've trained enough to run this one all out either.
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