Valentines 5M / 6K Race

Yesterday I teamed up with my 16 year old niece, G, to run in a Valentine's 6K/5M road race. She ran the 6K, I the 5M. Our combined time won us second place in the male/female open division; she won first in her division, I got zip — way too many old farts like me nursing their mid-life anguish. Anyway, fun time, I ran quite well/fast especially considering I haven't been doing any speed or tempos for quite a few weeks.

Clocked in with a 31:35 for 5M (6:19 average pace). Very cold, fairly hilly, no mile markers at all that I saw. G sandbagged the 6K with a 24:35 (6:37 pace :-) — she coulda run low 6:00s, but she's smart, didn't want to piss off her track coach by risking injury.

I went out pretty fast, tried settling in with a pack, but positioning was much more volatile, for some reason, than most races I've run, lots of passing back and forth, maybe because of the hills; there is, I think, great variation within the population in the ability to run up/down hills.

The dreaded "why am I doing this, I'm not really a runner" thoughts made a brief appearance toward the fourth mile. Thinking about dead people and my form helped get me through, and also trying to identify precisely what so awful, it's not like I'm in actual in pain, in the traditional sense, it's something else, it's just difficult, the fatigued legs are just sensations in the brain, like any other sensation, deal with it.

Tried hanging with some woman, for about a mile in the second half, then she was hanging with me, then we were pushing each other, she ultimately had more than me and pulled away with three-quarters to go. But I finished pretty strong, overall a decent race, a PR actually (I've actually run a 31:20 5 miler on treadmill, but at 1.0 incline, doesn't count).

Calf/shin muscles sore today, but not unpleasantly so, amazingly my shin (MTSS) doesn't seem to be very tender, and I was thrashing it on the downhills. Maybe I knocked it out, maybe I'm doing too much treadmill running, whatever.

Anyway, I've got about 100 feet of snow to shovel off of two driveways, that'll be my recovery, was going to do elliptical but my health club is having a snow day, lovely.

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So the final showing of The Children of Eden was cancelled today due to weather, Z and all us are very disappointed. I only got to see it three times. Z has had such a great time, being the youngest, 11, in a cast of middle and high schoolers, a great group of talented kids.

Real tear-jerker it was, the whole father, children, letting go thing, God & Adam, Adam & Cain, Noah & Japeth, me & S, aarrgghh ...

As a child, I found a sparrow
That had fallen from its nest,
And I nursed it back to health
till it was stronger than the rest.
But when I tried to hold it then,
It pecked and scratched my chest,
till I let it go ...

And I watched it fly away from me
With its bright and selfish song,
And a part of me was cursing
I had helped it grow so strong.
And I feared it might go hungry,
And I feared it might go wrong.
Oh ...

     — Noah, The Children of Eden

Needed a few glasses of wine after each performance.