Scheel’s Spring 5K & Goldy’s 5K

I had back-to-back races over the weekend. I guess when you make a goal to run 40 races for 40 years and you have less than a year to do it, this is bound to happen! :) I’m also happy to report that my feet feel pretty good, so go in fact that I finally feel like I can start training again…it only took 36 days after my marathon. I don’t think that is normal. Ha!

Scheel’s Spring 5K
The first race was Saturday in Mankato. We drove down to Mankato after work for packet pick up and meet DJ, Eric’s brother Tim, Danielle and Bradley at Dino’s pizza for dinner. It was good but since it was Friday having no meat kind of sucked.  We spent the night at DJ’s.

Race morning was clear but very WINDY. My Garmin says it was 11 mph but I think it was stronger than that. It also made the air very cold. So cold that I ran into the Scheel’s store and bought long sleeve shirt…thankfully it was on clearance and I actually LOVE it. I also forgot a head band and with the windy, my hair was flying in my face so I bought a matching headband…which I also LOVE.

The race itself was an out-and-back course from the mall parking lot. Nothing very scenic, lots of businesses and a couple car dealerships. It really wasn’t exciting. My first mile went exceptionally well but I think it was aided by the wind as it was at my back pushing me. Mile one time was 12:24. I’ll take that! Mile 2 was a bit slower at 12:45. There really wasn’t much assistance from the wind on that mile. Mile 3 was a bear. It was entirely into the windy and I was tired. My time was 13:15 which I’m not too happy about but my overall time was just under 40 minutes which made me happy. I like seeing the 30s again. I just need to get it much lower!

Goldy’s 5K
Sunday was our 4th time running Goldy’s 5K. I really like this race except it is very crowded with LOTS of walkers. I must have been tired from the day before because my legs were not having it during this race. The first half mile I was struggling with weird back/shoulder pain. It was taking my breath away literally. So I wasn’t surprised that my first mile was much slower than the day before at 12:56. My goal for this race was to keep my overall pace under 13 so that was looking a bit in jeopardy.

Mile 2 is where it gets crowd. There are a few narrow spots where we have to filter through and when you have people walking 4 across, there is no getting around them until you get in a more open area. As a result my pace was over 13:20. Mile 3 was a little better, I was under 13 minute mile pace for most of it and I think my watch went a little wonky when we rant by and under the stadium because my mile 3 and the course marker for mile 3 were complete different and not in the usual way. Normally my watch would hit miles before the actual mile marker, but not this time. So my watch says mile 3 was 13:18 but according to their mile markers it was around 12:45. I’m not sure which to believe. The rest of this race is inside the stadium so my watch doesn’t like it. Overall my time was 40:01. Darn, I missed an under 40 time by 2 seconds. Agh!

My Feet
I’m happy that my foot pain was very minimal this weekend. I had more pain on Saturday than Sunday. It was strange, all day Friday my right foot was hurting under my big toe. This is not the foot that I was having problems with before. It hurt pretty bad Saturday morning but I ran through the pain. Whatever it was, it must have resolved itself by Sunday morning as I was relatively pain free. :)

My next big test will be this weekend. I’m running the Hot Chocolate 15K. This course is very hilly so I’m not sure how I will do. As I haven’t really trained in 36 days, this will be a challenge. But I guess it is good to get it done since my next half marathon is just 20 days away. Yikes!