I got up bright and

I got up bright and early this morning for the Resurrection Run 5K in Nassau Bay. At Jon, who said he was standing there with Waverly and Joe and Edwin and they all wanted to make sure I hadn’t overslept!

Ha, ha. I swear, Jon is never going to let me live down last summer, when I overslept not once but twice and missed both the Lunar Rendezvous Run and Maribelle’s.

I got there about 10 minutes before race start and chatted with the four HRBers, as well as my friends Sean and Amy. Oh! I even saw a guy there wearing the t-shirt from the Yuri’s Night race two weeks ago, which made me all kinds of excited.

My goal for this race was ~11:00 miles, or anything under 34:00. Edwin and Joe are much too fast for me, but I was hoping to keep Jon in my sights for at least a mile or so. Jon, however, took off like a shot from the start line! Whoa! His red shirt got farther and farther away as I decided to just head out and see what happened. I know the course pretty well, and as the first mile marker neared I felt pretty worn out.

9:58.

Oh, that’s why I feel so tired!! I blame Jon for my fast first mile. The first marker is near an open bit around the lake, and I could see him up ahead. I knew that if I’d run a 9:58 mile, he had to have done sub-9:00. Whew! I resolved to keep it steady for the second mile and despite being tired, told myself that I would not walk until I hit the Mile 2 marker.

Where was that marker? I was getting so tired! I wanted to walk so bad! But finally I saw it up ahead.

10:08.

Oh, that’s why I’m still feeling like crap. I really pushed myself through that second mile! I walked for a minute here as I drank some water and let my heart rate calm down just a bit. “I still have 14 minutes to make it 1.1 miles to meet my 34:00 goal. Nooooo problem!” I thought. I started to run again. Then walked for 30 seconds. Then ran a little more. Then walked for 30 seconds. Boy was I tired!

Finally I turned onto the final road, with less than half a mile to go, and I decided to see if I could beat 33:00 instead. I hit the mile 3 marker just before turning into the parking lot.
10:31.

My walking hadn’t done too much damage, probably because I picked up the pace for ~30 seconds each time I prepared to walk! I covered the last 0.1 miles in 1:04, pushing myself to the finish line but feeling like I just had nothing left to push. As I crossed the line, the clock read 32:04, but my watch (which reflected the time I crossed the start line, even though my chip apparently did not record that correctly) read 31:41!

I beat 32:00 with a 31:41, which Jon pointed out after the race is my 2nd best Resurrection Run result (of four years). I laughed and told Jon that I didn’t even know that, and that he was amazing. He’d just been looking at past race results last night, as it turned out, and informed me that my best Resurrection Run was 30:something. He was right, of course, as I discovered when I looked it up myself.

In 2005 (when the race was on my birthday!) I ran 33:24. 2004 was my kick-butt year, coming off the excellent training I’d done for my first two half marathons, and I ran 30:30 according to my running log. In 2003, my first Resurrection Run, I ran 32:17.

I wanna run another sub-30:00 5K. I’ve only done it twice, both in December 2003 just before my first half marathon. I want to do it again in 2006.