Photo by Joe
It was pretty darn chilly when I headed out this morning for the Reindeer Run over at St. John’s hospital in Nassau Bay, but once the sun came up it turned out to be perfect weather for running. This is one of my favorite races in Houston, and I’m pretty sure I’ve run it every year since I moved here — which adds up to seven times! (Wow! I didn’t realize that until I counted it just now. Cool.) Most years it’s still pretty warm, and one year I remember it being really, really cold. This year was juuust right.
Sarah’s Reindeer Run History:
2002 – 31:40 (my PR at the time)
2003 – 29:18 (PR that stands to this day)
2004 – 30:34 (won a trophy for 3rd in my age group!)
2005 – 32:45 (it was warm that year — about 75 degrees)
2006 – 35:00 (ran it with Jose)
2007 – 32:24 (was really sore after doing random weight-lifting the day before)
2008 – 32:59
When I picked up my packet, I looked in vain for my foam reindeer antlers but they were nowhere to be found. I’d gotten a bag without antlers! Fortunately Joe hooked me up with a pair that matched my red long sleeve shirt from the 10-Miler.
My running motivation has been at rock bottom since late October, so I ran this race only because I like it so much, and I wasn’t disappointed. I saw a bunch of friends and got to run the whole race with Debbie, since she was taking it easy. I wore my watch but didn’t look at it, instead concentrating on just running and getting a few miles on my legs. I finished in 32:59 by my watch. I went with no expectations, so I don’t really have an opinion on my finish time. It’s fine. My pace was more consistent than usual, probably because I wasn’t worrying about it! Isn’t that how it goes? 🙂
As for future plans, I’m sure I’ll come out of the running lull soon enough. This might have actually been a good year to forego the half marathon in January, but I wasn’t even really thinking about that and missed the deadline to transfer my registration to someone else — if I had wanted to. We’ll see. I’m feeling pretty indifferent about the race at this point. I have so many other things going on that I’ve been viewing exercise just as a means of staying fit lately, not as a means of training hard for any specific event. Tri season was pretty busy, so I’m probably just a little burned out!
The event I am looking forward to is the Texas Independence Relay in March. I need to do some training for that, but only for speed — not really for distance. It’s the thought of distance training that really been making me think “ugh” in recent weeks.
