clanMcGraw.com

(I wasn’t going to post this, because we have more serious items to deal with right now. But I had already planned on what I wanted to say in my after-the-race post, and since Dana did ask about it, I’m taking that as my opportunity.)

Back in the Summer, I decided to start running again. My goal was to run the Vulcan 10K in November. I decided not to mention the goal on clanMcGraw.com, mainly because the last time I mentioned a race, my running fizzled. I ran through my neighborhood, at work, on vacation, and on the track at Church. I was incredibly out of shape when I got started (okay – I’m still out of shape). When I first did 3.1 miles, the time was something like 42 minutes. But I kept working on it. I was really starting to enjoy it. I decided to give a little hint to what was going on – That’s why the Nike+ plugin appeared on the left side of the blog. And if you’re one of my Google Mail chat contacts – that’s why I’ve had a countdown on it for the last 2 weeks.

Today I ran the Hueytown 5k. I had 3 goals:

1. Run time of < 34 minutes. I ran it in 33:25 (unofficially). That's about a 2.5 minute improvement from the only other 5K I've done.

2. Don't Finish last. I definitely wasn't the last one across the finish line.

3. Run the entire race - no walking. I didn't meet this goal. I had about 4 spots where I stopped and walked. But I never walked for more than 20 paces, and I didn't walk until I was past the 2 mile part. Given that I ran the 5K distance exactly 1 time in the last 3 weeks, I'll be satisfied with this result... for this race.

It was fun. I was really tired in the last half-mile. I think that’s because, as usual, I didn’t control my pace in the beginning of the race. I believe that my first mile time was around 9 minutes. That’s way too fast for me, at this stage of my (glorious) running career.

So what’s next? I’ve actually ruled out the Vulcan 10K on 11/3 for various reasons. But I’m hoping to keep increasing my distance, and keep working on my time. I’ll be in another race relatively soon.

One last comment, pertaining to the race course: Apparently whoever lays out the courses has a different definition of the word ‘flat’ than I do.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under clanMcGraw.com, Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.