My race T-shirt brought out some chuckles. There is nothing on the front. In the back it says “If you can read this, I am not last!”
At first I was enjoying that folks would pull up from behind me and come to the front to say how they found the shirt to be very funny.
It is only much later that I realized I might have inadvertently encouraged them to speed up and leave me in the dust!!
As if I got so scared at the prospect of replacing my running miles with biking miles, I went ahead and ran a 5K race this morning. The last time I ran in a race was Sep 2017 !! My normal pace these days is 11:30min/mile. Usually the adrenaline rush of the event, the music, the police escorts, so many runners and so on speeds me up by a minute per mile. I was therefore expecting to post a 10:30 pace.
Surprised myself with a 9:26 min/mile pace. I did not think my body is capable of posting those paces anymore. I am sure it will make the real damage known to me when I wake up tomorrow!!
This will bring some concern from John McGehee – my peak heart rate was 179! (that is nearly 110% of my HR Max at an age of 57!)
The 5K run finished up at Publix today because I was running low on Barista milk for cappuccino. For a brief moment, I considered ditching the plastic bag, grabbing the two cartons in my hands and running back home.
The prospect of the security guy putting in a spirited run behind me like he was trying to take down a shoplifter quickly disabused me of any such misadventures. In fact, walked back slower than normal 🙂 (Okay, okay, the left knee pain might have something to do with it)
With this run, now I have run in more countries in the world (30) than in states in the USA (29)! Need to go around running in USA a little bit more.
This was my first run after hurting my left leg. Was a bit relieved that I was able to finish it. Not to take any chances, did a lot of stretching and drank of lot of water this time 🙂
Remember how I posted about gaining confidence in longer runs every Saturday? Well, that could not have been more misplaced! In a few hours, while trying to hit a volleyball in the Green in downtown Alpharetta, badly pulled the upper left calf muscle.
That should be a lesson for me to stretch before and after long runs and keep drinking water.
Hobbling fairly badly now, but can move myself from Point A to Point B. Stairs are also okay as long as I do not put weight on my left leg while it is straight.
Now, if I can put another long run on Saturday, then that will really, really get my confidence back.
