James Wellinghurst 5K

Tuesday- After Monday night's long run and an upcoming race Tuesday evening, I decided to do a very short, easy run with Spot in the morning. I wanted to avoid hills, so I drove across the street (basically) through Coleman's to Ledge Pond Road. From there, I did a short trail run out to the Madison Boulder and back. My legs were a bit heavy so I took it easy. 3.8 miles through deer fly hell in 32:13. Cooled off Spot in the pond at the end.

Spot in Ledge Pond

John came home later in the morning. We attempted to go to Conway Lake, but 5 minutes after we arrived, a thunderstorm started to roll in, so I had John get out of the water. Just as he was stepping out of the water, the swimming coach, who poses as a lifeguard told John he had to get out of the water. Excuse me? I dont think so. I looked at him and said, coldly, "I've got it." The guy bugs me, always has. Mr. Rule Enforcer of a beach he really has no authority on. Fortunately, he's not there on weekends, so we can all (pretty much all of the usual families) get on with our regular rule-breaking activities. Haha.

That pretty much killed the middle of the day, so we just went to the grocery store and then back home. Storms kept popping up all around the area, and I started to worry about the James Wellinghurst 5k in Madison getting delayed or cancelled. As soon as 4:45pm rolled around, though, the skies were pretty clear over my house and Madison (I live right on the Albany/Madison town line).

Storm that moved in over Conway Lake right after we got there.

The race is a point-to-point run. I needed to get John and ride from the start to the finish, so I arrived early. I was the first one there. Ha ha. Terry Ballou showed up right after me; I was expecting to race her, but she said she wasn't racing tonight. I waited until Bernie and Eileen Livingston arrived. They do the timing, so I knew they would be going from the start to the finish, and I asked them if John could hitch a ride with them. They were happy to have him so that was all set. I left John at the starting area and drove my car to the finish line at Silver Lake Railroad. Darin Brown & kids and Frank Holmes were just leaving to run back to the start when I parked, so I caught up with them for the warm-up. It was nice and easy. 1.7 miles. At the start, I checked in with John and talked to the other runners for awhile. Then it was time to start. The field seemed smaller than usual, but the men still had a decent bunch of competitors with Tim Livingston, Nick Brown and Andrew Drummond moving out in front right after the start. There were a few other guys I didn't recognize who hung with the front runners for as long as they were in my sight. Darin Brown went out in front of me, and I focused on staying just behind him the whole race. The first mile is fast, as it's almost all downhill, and I hit it in 5:43. The second mile is much slower since it's almost all uphill. Nothing crazy, but it slowed me down by almost a minute in 6:40. Third mile is downhill and flat to the finish, and I hit 5:59. The course is short by about .1 miles, so I came in with a faster time than a real 5K at 18:14, 1st woman. Not sure of my overall place. Darin finished in front of me in 18:01. I had managed to stay within about 8 seconds behind him for the first 2 miles, but he gained a little on me in the last mile. I missed having Terry for some competition, but I still ran almost a minuted faster this year than last. I still feel I could do better than that, but I'm just not willing to train for it. So 3 runs for the day made 8.5 miles for the day. A little less than a normal Tuesday, but with a real race in there, I didn't want to do too much in the morning.

As soon as I finished, I grabbed watermelon and water, found John and then bolted right to the car. John's ninja class was at 6:30pm, and we were already going to be late. I wished I could have hung out after the finish, but John loves ninja class, and I didn't want him to miss it. I'm glad we didn't either because the coaches let parents come out to play on the equipment. (Only one dad and I were actually capable. LOL) John made me try some of the things he does in class. I could do most of it, like the rings (both types: gymnastics and hanging sea of rings) and climbing up and over the bar. One thing he wanted me to was too low (at kid level) so I couldn't do it. John kept telling me to try, so I did... and I failed. ha ha. I showed John how to do a round-off. Bad idea. I thought I was going to pull a muscle after the third time. It's so much fun. I wish they would put on adult class.

Wednesday- Up at 4:40am for the first time in a long time to get on the treadmill. 5 miles. 7:20/mi pace. Sweat my freakin' ass off in the basement. I have to work a 34 hour shift, with a 14-hour on call shift immediately following it, so my Thursday run will consist of probably about 3 miles at the I'll Be Dipped event on Silver Lake. Since it's less than 2 miles from the ambulance base, I'll be able to run the 3-mile prediction run and still have time to get back to the base, even if I get called in mid-run. But that will probably be it. Once I'm home, I might be able to run on the treadmill again, but I might just bag it. We'll see what tonight brings, as far as sleep goes.