Yup, last weekend I ran in the Redlegs 5k, which is a charity race that is held every year downtown. The course circles around downtown, but the coolest part is that the race ends inside the ballpark. For the last 0.1 miles of the race, the course takes you around the outfield warning track and it ends near home plate. It's such a cool experience to finish the race on the playing field and see yourself up on the Jumbotron as you finish. Pretty neat stuff.
And to top it off, after the race, there is all sorts of food and goodies. Stuff like Powerade drinks, cookies, pizza, ice cream... all for free!! Pretty sweet deal! Plus, who can argue with a free t-shirt? I'm probably one of the biggest suckers ever when there's a free t-shirt involved!
Anyways, this year I ran in the 5k along with some friends. J-Tizzle, Julie D, and some of Julie's co-workers decided to run too. So we had a good time going downtown on a Saturday morning, enjoying the nice weather, and getting a good workout... all before 11:00 am!
I've been feeling the urge to start running again lately. I am finding that I miss that part of my past life (when I used to run all the time in high school). I miss the feeling of being in that great of shape, with my legs, upper body, and lungs all working like a perfectly-oiled machine. And I miss the feeling of gliding effortlessly along the course with the wind in my face and being able to recover quickly when the race was over instead of being sore for 3 days afterwards. Sometimes I just long for those days.
But I am also finding that getting back into shape is not easy. The more I run now, the more I get frustrated because I remember how fast I used to run in high school and now I get down when I can't even come close to that anymore.
My goal for this 5k was to finish in under 30 minutes, which is a pretty modest goal. I finished with a time of 30:39. Not great, but at least that's a sub 10-minute-mile pace. But considering that in high school, I used to routinely run 5k's in under 19 minutes, it's quite a fall from glory.
I would like to someday get back to running a 5k in under 20 minutes, but that just seems so impossibly far away right now. But at least sub 25 minutes may be more realistic.
1 comment:
Paul and I took up running again this winter and i hope to run a 4 miler in Sept - i'm nowhere close to what i was in high school! :( how much did it cost to run the 5K in Cinci? sounds like something paul would like to do, especially since it ends in the stadium. so since you are reconnecting with your HS days...are you playing the trumpet, too :)
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