The season is over and surprisingly the phrase that one would expect to hear of "Season Ending Injury", was never mentioned. That's an accomplishment by itself as far as I'm concerned. You know I like numbers, that's a total of 366 miles over the past four months. Impressed by that? How about an even more impressive stat of 14 races completed? Damn! Then lets talk about the bling. Two firsts, four seconds, and three thirds. That's a nice medal wall.
I'm not exactly sure of when the goal became running a 5K in under twenty minutes, but it was probably soon after getting 21:30 in my first 5K after the marathon. That was the goal, but this season is going to end with the closest I could get being a 20:02. I just wasn't able to break into the 19's. Sure, I'm disappointed, but in the end it's difficult to train for three (.1) miles of speed and twenty-six (.2) miles of distance at the same time. Doesn't seem like it should be, running should be running, but it is.
The consolation prize is sweet though. Running as many races as I did help my chances in the championship series run (ha pun) by the local runner's group. How you do in each race scores points based on how you do. After the season is over, those points are tallied and the top three people get awards for their age group. There are some seriously fast guys in my age group. I could quit my day job, train full time, and still wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of beating them. I wasn't very optimistic of my chances, but through some miracle of at least lowering my times to be decent and luck of some of those really fast guys not running all the races they could, I came in third. WOOT!
The next marathon is around the corner and I suppose that will be the true end to the season. But I'll also let you in on a little secret...summer might be over, but the running season is far from over!
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