Running

On July 4th, I completed one of my goals for 2011. The 3rd 5K was in the bag!

This is a race that I had been fairly familiar with in the past. Years ago, the wife and I ran the 8K race with my Dad. We were living in Wisconsin at the time and had trained and felt pretty good about surviving the run. What we didn’t plan for was the humidity. In Wisconsin, there isn’t the humidity that Iowa can bring. And on July 4th of that year, it brought the PAIN!!! Mid 70s for a start with 97% humidity. Imagine running 5 miles while being water boarded. Not to mention my dad gave my wife and I a senior citizen ass kicking. Not only did he finish before us, he had time to get food for himself and then go back for some recovery food for us once we finished. So yeah, I pretty much swore off the 8K race for the rest of my life unless a pack a rabid dogs were chasing me. And even then, I think I’d take my chances with the dogs.

My 2nd official 5K of the year was the Dam to Dam 5K. One of the largest in the US with 2800 runners. This goes hand in hand with the largest 20K that my wife ran.

Race day was warm and a bit humid with the starting temp nearing 80 at the 9:45 start. Add in the 80%+ humidity and well, you have a day of suck ahead of you. The start of the race was delayed due to a medical emergency so we really didn’t get running until about 10AM. My goal for this race was to finish somewhere in the 25-27 minute range. I had been running a lot more since the first race and felt that a 8 – 8:30 mile range was my new comfort zone. Given the temps, I knew I would be pushing the higher end of the range.

So far, I’m off to a good start in completing one of my goals for 2011. Its not a huge stretch goal for me, but it keeps me in a certain shape in order to complete goal #5, run 3 5K races in a year.

Race #1 is in the bag. Considering it was run on 2/12 in Iowa, you would expect absolutely freezing temps. To be honest, I was overdressed seeing as it was in the mid 30s at the start of the race. And I was only wearing a tshirt, long sleeve T and then a sweatshirt. I should have dumped the sweatshirt but I was solo on this one and didn’t have a good person to hand it off to on the route.