10K

This morning I got up at a bright and early 5 AM to go to the local 10K race downtown. I tried hard to get to bed early (11:40 PM in this case). I was successful with that but woke up several times during the night afraid I missed my alarm going off. The last I checked it was 5:02 AM (really that's 4:52 AM as I keep all my clocks set 10 minutes fast. I got that from my mother).

I left at 5:45 AM. It was raining. Ugh! I arrived in plenty of time and was going to park where the flyer said we should park. Well, I couldn't figure out where that was exactly. It was not where I thought it was and wound up driving around for 30 minutes. Finally, I screwed that idea and parked somewhere downtown. I managed to park at the newspaper building which was just a few feet from the start line. It was still raining at this point, and I was beginning to get chilled and nervous. I must have gone to the porta-porty three times within an hour!

There were a lot of people here for a local race--over 3,000. Everyone gathered at the start line. By this time, the rain had stopped. The gun went off, and off we went. I had no clue where I was and apparently mid-pack, so it took me a little longer than I expected to find a pace. By mile 2, I finally did. The rest of the race was uneventful except for whatever reason, I felt sick during the race and at the end of the race. I felt really bad for this poor girl who thought I might hurl on her (sorry gross I know) at the finish line. I didn't and managed to find a porta-potty again.

During the race, there was one person who stuck out at me. She was quite thin. I do not know whether she had an ED, but her running style was what I see a lot of very thin people look like running--kind of crouched, low to the ground, with long strides. I'm not making any generalizations, just observations. She wound up passing me after I had her at some point. It took a lot for me not to kill myself to reach her and pass her. I don't know why that competitive streak comes out in me. It's always been a bit of a achilles heal for me and seems to come and go.

All in all, the race went fairly well. I'm not sure what my exact time was as I don't remember what the announcer said, and I forgot to stop my watch right at the finish line.

I called my parents after the race since they both wanted to know how I did. Both of them thought I did well, but my dad says, "you know if you had ran that pace at the marathon, your time would have been incredible. If you had just run a few more miles, just think of the time." :sigh: I agreed that my time would have been better but no need to dwell on the subject now.

The rest of today will be spent just doing things around here. I may take a nap this afternoon as well. What I really need is a day to sleep in really late. Maybe tomorrow since I'm off in the morning. I know next week is going to be very busy, so I need to keep myself out of the exhaustion state.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July!