On the road again

As planned, I ran a 5k road race in Louisville yesterday. It was my first time running a 5k in about 4 years. Running long is slow and fairly painful. I've become pretty accustomed to it. I don't get nervous about taking on long distances. But a 5k is fast. It's violent, hard and very painful. It's something that I used to be good at when I was young. My best 5k was in high school – I ran a few sub 17's.

But now I'm older and larger and I try not to remember how fast I used to be. It can be depressing. However, if I'm going to try to qualify for Boston again, I'm going to have to have to get faster. One of the best ways I know how to do that is by running short road races. Thus I raced yesterday.

Boy did I get nervous about a simple 3.1 mile race. My stomach churned and I secretly hoped I'd oversleep. I worried about the pain. I worried about keeping the right pace. I worried that I couldn't run fast anymore. I was really dreading the whole thing.

Thanks to my wife I got up in time. But my stomach was a mess and I had to use the facilities at the last minute – so I found myself behind over 5000 runners at the starting line. It took my 5 minutes to begin. It was chip timed, but because I started behind so many runners, I knew that it was going to be impossible to get off a good time. I spent the entire race dodging curbs, benches and slower runners and walkers as I zigzagged through the course trying to go as fast as I could. I ended up with a time of 21:10 – a little under seven minutes a mile. My wife and kids waited for me and thought I'd be disappointed because I was so far back in the pack. They didn't know that I stared behind everyone. In truth, I was pretty happy. While it did hurt and I didn't go that fast, I found that my speed hadn't entirely left. My endurance also seems strong- my last mile was the fastest.

Seven months to go to Chicago, I'm running smoothly, spring looks like it's finally coming- Challenges will surely come but things are looking good right now.