Running In Place

First of all, I’m alive and well! I have been pretty busy with work - I started at the hospital, though I won’t be up on the unit for another week or so. Right now it’s mind-numbing classroom orientation and my back is bothering me terribly from sitting in rigid plastic chairs all the day long. The week prior to starting, the weather was beautiful and I got to spend alot of time outside. My sister, her family, and I scaled (ok, walked up) Bald Mtn. (elv. 2350 ft.) one day, and another day I took a solitary hike up to Trenton Falls. Both times, I got to see leaves more beautiful than we’ve had in at least a few years. I sure do love autumn! Here’s some mountain climbing pics and here’s some pics of the falls.

Since then, it has been cold, rainy, and windy for 9 days straight.

Ok, so let me talk about my race yesterday, and my dilemma. This was the first running of a 5K to benefit the programs at the local YWCA and was to take place primarily in Proctor Park. Though mostly flat, the paved paths that wind through the park do have a few small rolling hills, so I was not expecting to even come close to my fast-and-flat New Haven time. Plus, with some girl-related aches and pains, and the seemingly endless dreary weather seeping into my psyche, I was feeling crabby and unmotivated. Not at all exciting, a chore in fact. But I dragged my cranky self up and out.

Fast forward to the start of the race. Dark and overcast but at least not raining. 53F (actually warmer than it had been in a few days) and the wind had let up. We set off and I spent the first half mile going too fast, but when the people thinned out I slowed to what felt like a more reasonable pace to start with. At the first mile marker I hit my watch: 9:19. What??? That totally cannot be true! Even with the fast start, I was not feeling the level of effort I would have expected for what is, for me, pretty damn fast! I did slow a little more, if this was true I didn’t want to flame out in the second mile.

Pretty soon I came up on D. This is the 77 year old lady who always beats me. That’s right, my race day nemesis is seventy freakin’ seven years old. Wipe that smirk off your face. You may remember that the only time I ever beat D. was when she had to drop out of a race because her pacemaker was acting up. So that was kind of an empty victory. We chatted for a bit and she said she had a new pacemaker. Drat! Now what chance do I have? We ran a bit together until we came up on an older gentleman and they started chatting. I thought here’s my chance! and I pulled ahead. I did hear him say that he thought the first mile felt a little short, which I agreed with but it was still disappointing. I finished the second mile in 9:58, which certainly seemed more realistic.

I was glad to find that I had sufficient energy to speed up for the last 1.1 and was able to pass a few people, including kicking by one person in the finishing stretch. I had looked at my watch and saw that it said 28:xx so I just poured it on. In the end, my watch said 28:57!! What? That beats New Haven by 34 seconds - with some hills, on a day that I feel like sh!t. Hmmmm. And here’s the kicker(s) - I beat D. by, like, more than a minute - and I don’t want to hear anything about your age-adjusted nonsense David! Just cause she’s 39 years older than I am and has an appliance in her chest that reminds her heart to beat and most days can smoke my a$$ doesn’t mean she gets cut any breaks! Eat my dust lady!! AND I placed first in the F35-39 AG!!!! Granted, there were only 78 runners - who knows, I might have been the only one in that AG, but it was kind of cool nonetheless. I didn’t hang around for the awards so I found out when a friend of my sister’s who was there called to let me know. She’s going to make sure I get my award, a silver rape whistle. No I am not kidding. It is the YWCA after all.

So here’s the dilemma. After the race, I heard quite a few people speculating that the course was short. No one seemed to have a notion of by how much, just that I was not the only person reflecting surprisingly fast times. The local running club administered this race for the Y and they certainly have put on plenty of races in their time, so I don’t doubt their expertise but I don’t know what to think. Should I count this as a PR? Unless the course was short by quite a bit, I know I still ran a good fast race, but is it really a best time? Dunno. So what do I do??

One last thing - back in the beginning of the year, the last of my many cats died. At that point, I was not so much of the mind to get any more cats and my husband was all onboard with that. But recently, I really got to missing having a kitty around the house, so I chipped away at the old man until he finally, reluctantly, said ok. Meet Junior. I got him from the local humane society - he is gigantic, and he purrs like crazy, and is a big cuddly love, and my husband won’t stop snuggling with him

Oops, one last last thing. Susan tagged me for the 5th sentence of my 23rd post. To put it in context - it was the post in July ‘04 announcing that the orthoped gave me clearance to start running again after the stress fracture. He was giving me the lecture about taking it slow and not repeating the same mistakes (duh):

He can caveat all he wants - I am very very excited!!

I haven’t been able to keep up on people’s blogs too well lately, so I will tag some folks and apologies if I’ve double-tagged you! Let’s hear from Jeanne, Ed, Jennifer, Dawn, and Riona.