Not Exactly as Planned

This weekend was one of the most difficult weekends I've had in recent memory. I had to give up my two companions for the past 13 years. I hope they understand and forgive me. It's not the way I wanted it to happen, but couldn't find a solution that worked for all the parties involved. They provided me a constant welcome home, entertainment, love, and an endless supply of hair for all these years. Hopefully, I found a home you can be happy in.

Love you both Rascal and Shy! I'm going to miss you horribly.

A Year to the Date

I can no longer use the excuse that I haven't even been running for a year yet. This weekend marked the one year anniversary of running my first 5K. It would have been fitting to run the same race again, unfortunately, that race didn't take place this year. Who would have thought my running career lasted longer than the first race I picked? Certainly not me or anybody with betting money in their pocket. Speaking of things that you wouldn't predict, how about getting company sponsored for running? It's official, not only has it been a year, but I can now casual boast "Yeah, I've got corporate sponsorship". I'll try to hide the fact it's my own company and it probably won't happen again, but it's still cool to say, not to mention the shirts to go with. Now....if I could just find somebody who is gullible enough to believe it!

This week was a crazy week. Total, it felt like there were four seconds of free time. I'm hoping that this will be the last week like this one for a very long time. Through all the events, it worked out that my long run for the week took place on Thursday. Normally, I like to have two days to recover after doing a long run, not necessary with no running, but certainly not a race schedule for day two, but that's what had to happen this week. Doing a short warm up run before the race, I could feel plenty of muscles working when it's normally they just work behind the scenes. This could be ugly! This course had more damn corners, this is one time where I'm glad people were ahead of me, otherwise I would have got lost.

Stressful week, tight legs, a year to the date, I ended up 1st in my group (with no asterisk this time). Perfect Anniversary to my first race. Oh, somebody else got first in her division too.

First 1st*

Running races is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get. Sorry Forest, I'm stealing your line. This week our race schedule brought us to Allegan. Even though we are getting closer to Fall, today although cooler, it was very humid. This was one of those days where physically I just didn't feel like I had much power in my legs. The first mile didn't feel fast to me and after it, the rest of the race felt as though I was in maintain mode. At the mile mark I had already decided that there would be no PR on this date, simply run as hard as I could without overheating and killing myself. Imagine my surprise when seeing the results to find out that I got first! A few weeks ago, I run out of my mind and crush my PR and come within three seconds of getting my ultimate goal, yet end up 7th in my age group. Now, to have what I'd consider a very average race and getting my first, 1st place medal to date. Kind of funny.

I do have to asterisk after this finish though. In this case, I got the medal, but the only reason I did is another guy in my age group placed 2nd overall to receive a trophy. So, to me it's not official, but where's that chocolate...I'm gonna celebrate anyway!

This shirt was at the race. Though it doesn't really fit the theme of this entry, I still like it.

Special Treats

This weekend was a special one. Yeah, yeah, another weekend and another 5K, I do have one scheduled for every Saturday this month. What makes this one special? This was a return to my hometown. I rarely come back to visit and have been gone for eighteen years now. When I do come back, I certainly never ran a race. Thinking back, I remember one summer either when I was a freshman or a sophomore toying with the idea of joining the cross country team. There was hardly any serious effort put into that idea, but I do remember running with a portable cassette player a few times. When's the last time you've seen one of those? Anyway, it was a long time ago and nothing ever became of it because I never joined the team. Though it never happened, with recent history, I am kind of curious if I would of had any success back then. Getting in shape, running, the goal was always to be able to say the cliche "I'm in the best shape of my life". Had I joined the team, hard to say what could have happened, but the fact I didn't, I think it's fairly obvious I can use the cliche.

The moments before the race I watched three young adults displaying the exact traits that kept me from joining organized sports back in school. Cockiness, huge egos, jockeying for position right on the start line and at one point I heard the three of them predicting they were going to finish 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Here were my villains for this race. Eighteen years later, still it instantly reminded me of everything I hated about high school. Bang goes the gun. By a half mile in, I was already by two of them. The one punk actually looked like a decent runner and I actually figured the best I could do would be to stay close to him and use the excuse that he was younger in the end. I was certainly motivated, little did I know I had some secret weapons for me along the route. At just over the mile mark, I surged past him, good riddance. In the back of my head, I was worried of him catching me later, but I never saw any of them again. I knew we weren't in the same age group, but that was a HUGE satisfaction knowing that these jock types got crushed by a aging computer nerd.

What were the secret weapons I spoke of? Only further proof that I have the most amazing and creative family. Unknown to me, prior to the race that morning, my mom and aunt were out at the crack of dawn placing homemade signs all along the race route. Messages like "CT you can do it!", "Ace loves CT", and my personal favorite "Run for the bling CT". I doubt I smile ever during a race. The course was a mix of road, trail, deck, and our favorite a suspension bridge that felt like your knees were made of rubber. Without photographic proof, I doubt I did smile on the outside (damn it, I was working hard), but every time I came to a sign it made me smile on the inside. It was a very special treat and I think my favorite part was standing around post race and having people actually asking if CT was the "Bling Girl".

CT and I both ran away from my hometown with 2nd place medals and twelve special signs. It was great having family there to support us and I honestly think they had more excitement for us than energy I spent racing. For the last note, the first place finisher received a trophy, next year we are coming back for the support...and that a trophy!

The Results Rock

Well, if you read my previous entry, I was attempting to motivate myself. Did it work? I could give an quick answer, but what fun would that be? If I don't build up the suspense like one of the three million music, talent, and dance shows out there, I'd feel like I'm doing you the reader a disservice. Even though I intend to tease you, I promise there won't be any commercial breaks and I'll keep this show under an hour. For the record, if you can't tell based on the title, then something is really wrong with you.

In addition to the attitude adjustment I spoke about in the previous entry, I also started training a little different. I'm always joking around, but I'm saying this with a straight face, I've been running Fartleks (Fart-licks). Don't ask. I've got no idea where that term comes from and quite honestly, I really don't even want to know. I'm pretending it's the last name of the person who invented the technique and that it didn't come from a elementary school playground. The concept is fairly simple, run harder, then run relaxed, repeating at various intervals. The past two weeks, I've been mixing this technique into my runs.

Did it work? The day before the race, I posted on Facebook that I wanted to cut a minute off my time to get myself officially in the 19's. That was really raising the bar, that's a huge number to pull off. Last year, I would have been ecstatic to pull of 22's. Hitting 20's, felt like an unrealistic goal. Getting under 20, that's officially fast in my book. My post was more motivation, I felt confident that I could lower my PR, but would have guessed maybe 10 seconds. Prior to the start, I felt some tightness in my knee, the humidity was in the uncomfortable level, so I wasn't sure how the race would go. At the start, I felt good the first mile, but I also didn't feel as explosive as I did the previous race. I ran my plan, which was simply run as hard as could based on the conditions and even though there were some rivals around (I'm sure this will be a blog entry at some point down the road), don't pay attention to my watch. It wasn't until I made the final turn and could see the official clock that it hit me how close I actually was to my bold prediction. The clock had 19:xx on it and even though I knew it was going to be very close to actually keeping 19 on it, the race was already a huge success. I missed the 19's by 3 seconds to finish at 20:02, so so close!

My best 5K to date. Improving by 45 seconds, wasn't the 60 I really wanted, but I'm hardly going to beat myself up for getting that close. The results rocked, in fact, which happened to fit in perfect with my plans for later the night. CT's nephew was playing a concert that night and it made the end to a great day. Here's video from the show, not bad, not bad at all.