Thursday, May 17, 2012

And the Thunder Rolls

Tonight Sharon and I planned to meet at the Big Creek Greenway to get one last training run in before we run our 5K on Sunday.  As we were getting ready to start, we heard a clap of thunder...yikes!  Talk about motivation to run faster!

I found someone's Road ID in the parking lot, so Sharon called his wife's number that was on the ID and told her we had found it (husband not attached) and told her where we would be leaving it so they could come back and get it.  We got our stretch on and then started our run.

I felt really good starting out.  I was following my 2:30/1 intervals beautifully.  At around the first mile I heard a little rustle off the trail and saw a nice, large black snake hanging out - he was probably a king snake or a rat snake, neither of which are lethal to humans, so I went along my way.  I thought about stopping to take a picture of it but I would have had to pull my phone out of the armband and it wasn't worth the time, so I kept going.  Had my mom been with me she probably would have outrun me - she's deathly afraid of snakes.

The greenway was a really nice run.  There are quite a few wooden boardwalks to run on which was much easier on my shins.  It was nice and shady, and with the storm rolling in the clouds helped out, although the only breeze I really got was from the bicyclists riding by me.  I need to remember to take pictures next time. 

I ran the 1.5 miles and then turned around, meeting Sharon not too far behind me.  As I went along, I slowed down a bit and had to walk a little more, but in the end I was able to maintain an average pace of 11:47 and I beat my first 5K time by 3 minutes - I'll take it!  Hopefully I'll be able to do this on Sunday!

By the time I finished, the thunder and lightning had picked up a bit.  I chugged some Gatorade I put in my car and waited for Sharon to finish.  We had a post run stretch and headed home, just as the rain started to come down.

The pup was happy to see me when I got home.  To occupy him while I iced my shins, I put some treats in his new toy he got at Woofstock -

Ice Ice Baby...
My love comes home from San Francisco tomorrow!!  Our time together will be short as he has to fly out to Montana for work on Monday, so I may disappear until Monday night, recapping my weekend and - most importantly - my race!  I think I have an addiction to races...as soon as I'm done running one I'm already looking ahead to when I'm going to run my next one.  Not a bad problem to have!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and good luck to the other ladies who are running races this weekend - I'm cheering you on!

Until next time,

Jen

3 comments:

  1. OMG! I would HATE to see a snake while running! I know what you mean about race addiction! I have at least one just about every month until fall! I'm running my 3rd this month next Sunday! Good luck on your race this weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay seeing your poor shins makes me so sad! I hope they feel better soon. I am really not a fan of pain (which is strange because I keep having kids). Take care of your shins! Oh, and super great job on the run. You are fast girl :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good luck with your race - I'm sure you're going to do great!!!

    That's how it went for me. Once I did my first race, I wanted to do another and another and another...Five years later I'm still going strong :)! I hope it works that way for you too.

    Take care of those shins. I hope you get past those shin splints soon.

    ReplyDelete

Your comments make me smile :)