Back From the Dead

OK, that’s a little dramatic. I was never even close to dead. Though work has lately been trying to eat me alive, or rather, bore me to death via meetings upon meetings upon meetings. Then after surviving the meetings I have to pound out some actual work (so, little to no lunch break). I am an adamant opponent to after-work working (after a 9 hour day, I think you should able to have the evening to yourself) but I even went against it in recent weeks. Thus why this blogging thing as gone to shit. I used to have time to run at lunch, but lately, I haven’t had spare time, so I’m going to attempt early morning running otherwise I fear I will fall off the wagon. This morning, I cranked out 8+ miles and it turned out to be less awful than I expected. Though my legs were seriously moving through molasses the first half mile or so.

So, two weekends ago, I ran a little 5K in my town. It was flat and very well organized. I actually PR’d (possibly PR even considering high school since we rarely ran that distance) – 23:32. I finally broke that stupid annoying 24 (what’s funny is that I had been busting my rear in late 2009 to break 26 – which didn’t happen until Feb 2010). My splits were within 1 second of each other, it was like I was running on a treadmill or something.

Anyway, it was the day before my 7 year anniversary, and since I had a full day of workshops and meetings scheduled for our actual anniversary, we figured we’d celebrate on the Sunday. Thus, I was in no mood to hang around after the race. Especially since last year, the attendance was really high – local elite runners showed up, so I figured it would be the same this year and I’d have no chance of placing. Smooth move, ex-lax. If I had paid attention during the actual race, I would have noticed that there were few women ahead of me at the turn around. That would have been an indicator that age group placement was likely. But no, I went home, and ran another 5 on the TM at the Y. Two days later, results post and I was 10th overall female, 2nd 30-34. I have no idea what bling I missed out on but it is still annoying me (I emailed them last week asking if there was some medal or something and if I missed the boat, but have heard nothing. Probably SOL on this one).

Moral of the story is pay attention to the leaders as you approach the turnaround, wait for results, and don’t try to speculate based on previous years’ results.

This past weekend I hauled my butt up to Cypress for a cheap, flat, chip-timed 10K. I also got to meet my twitter buddy, Partner-in-Harass-Oual-on-Twitter-Crime Giraffy. It was her birthday so as she ran toward the finish the volunteers heard me call her “birthday girl” and wished her happy birthday, too, which must been weird to hear as you are trying to bust your ass to the finish. Hopefully it wasn’t too distracting! I couldn’t help myself I knew it would get them to cheer, too.

This race was run well, but my main beef with it was the fact that it was long (6.29 – WTF – that is like 40 seconds for me) and the age groups were 10 years. As we ran by the markers, I knew it was long, so I was telling myself that I had better keep pushing it or I wouldn’t even make my low-end goal of under 50:00 (anything over 50 would have ruined my day – which is funny because in the past I would have been happy with anything under 55:00). I finished 49:37. Probably would have been 48:5x if the course had been 6.2. Still off my PR of 48:17 in February, but, whatever. I’ll take it. Unfortunately, the age group thing bit me in the ass again, this time I finished 5th, but 5th in 30-39. Had they done 30-34, I would have been 3rd.

That will have to be all for today – I have hijacked my lunch break to brain dump this half-assed post. Not that any of the rest of my posts are ever better than half-assed. Well, they are at least 65%-assed.

Oh, and too bad Faster Bunny’s Bachlorette contest didn’t involve just picking the top two because I would be winning! I knew it would be Ben F. and JP at the end.