2 5Ks and A Lot of Schoolwork!

Summer is over, and the school year is going full blast!  I've kept a long run of about 11-14 miles each week and done some faster runs with teammates Julia and Kylie, but mostly I've taken it easy and am not training for my usual fall marathon.  Rick went out of town for 2 weeks, and I did laps around my neighborhood in the mornings for my daily runs and hired a sitter for my long run.  I was really touched by Kylie's insistence that she and Julia meet at my house one morning to run laps with me.  As I've said, these girls are great teammates, and that gesture meant more to me than they'll ever know.

Speaking of the girls, we "faced off" at the Running of the Bulls 5K on Saturday, August 24 in Hampton Cove, AL.  I ended up third from our trio (time of 20:03), falling behind Julia for the first time in a race (her time-19:51)!  Kylie took first in 18:42, so you can see that Julia and I are much more evenly matched than either of us are to her!  My splits were 6:14, 6:29, and 6:34.  I started too fast and just faded at the end.  Kylie says that you have to "remember how to hurt" to do these 5Ks well, so I hope to do that as we approach the fall 5Ks!

I couldn't pass up an opportunity to try another 5K the next weekend.  This one was the Monte Sano 5K, following the Monte Sano 10K held right before.  My family came up for this one.  Usually the 5K competition is pretty light since you can run both of the races for the price of one (many people take advantage of that).  But I faced a 15 year old girl from out of town, and she was tough!  Unfortunately for her, she kept making wrong turns (some of the course is on gravel and dirt trails).  I kept yelling directions to her from behind!  And the women start 10 minutes after the men, so we were weaving through the slower men by this point.  Still, I took first place in the end of the 2nd mile and kept my lead until the end, finishing in a time of 20:28 (6:36 pace).  Splits were 6:17, 6:54, and 6:37, with .39 (6:24 pace) for the .1.  The prize for winning was really nice: $40 to Outback, a gift card for a 30 minute deep tissue massage, a poncho, and a drawstring bag.  Rick took the pictures below unless noted.

Start line for the Monte Sano 5K

The women getting ready to start

Gregg Gelmis was on the course taking pictures.  Here you can see how tight the first women were in that first mile.  I looked down at my Garmin and backed off once I realized that I was going sub-6!  

Top 3 women race the first mile

Finishing

I did a 1-mile cool down with my daughter

Quilt made with all of the shirts to commemorate the 25 year of Beth directing the race!

Accepting prizes from James

Our goodies!

I have sometimes wondered over the last 3 weeks if I will have time to blog (and sometimes even run!!!) during this school year.  But then I find those minutes and snatch them up!  So my apologies if my blogging suffers a little this year as I shift my priorities around to accommodate new commitments.