Zozo in the snowsnow, plus 5K PR

Here's a picture from the big snow back in December. Zozo, at this point of the walk, is really really mad at me.

 

The 5k last weekend was a resounding success. The night before the race, I was setting up my watch to tell me when to walk and to make the intervals and stuff, but decided to change my plan to be a little less conservative. The original plan was to run 1000m and walk a bit, because those are the intervals we've been doing on the track. While programming the watch, I decided that I could do with only 3 walk breaks so made it run 1250m before walking a bit. That worked ok, but was challenging, and at the half way point, I realized that if I walked a tiny bit longer, a teammate could catch up with me.

This is a nice way to have done a race, because 1. I was able to meet my goal to improve, 2. I know there is more improvement available, and 3. Gasping conversation is better than no conversation.

I don't know the official time yet, but it's probably less than the time I recorded on my watch because I forgot to press the stop button right away. My watch says it was 36:15, which is a 11:37 pace, which is totally awesome for me. The best 5K result I could find for me was from the 2008 GW Parkway 5K, which was 36:41, and I remember feeling truly awful coming down the home stretch for that one. On Saturday, I was breathing hard, but still had "go" left in my legs.

I got to enjoy the rest of the day as well, with an adventure to an Asian superstore and a visit to the natural history museum. They've put in some sort of ocean exhibit and have an aquarium. I could've watched those fish all day, but it was also fun to look at the prehistoric coral reef and try to find different things.

Sunday was drizzly. I had grand plans to knit and watch Lost, but ended up playing Civilization almost all day. This knitting project is never going to get done if I don't work on it.

Today I woke up stupid early to go to morning bootcamp (part of the annual goals). It was pretty awesome, and I ended up sitting down at work before 8am, which is crazy! I think I'll be able to avoid the excessive muscle soreness some other people said usually happens because I really just don't want to try that hard. It seems like I should be able to get stronger by just trying harder than I would be if I were still in bed (which is where I would usually be from 6-7am on Monday mornings)

Tonight is hashing, which is a fun addition to the workout schedule. At least it's usually fun. If the lunges from this morning come back to haunt me this afternoon, it will be less fun.


*** Update, official time 35:30, 5K PR

Fast-forward to 2010

Since last writing, I successfully got quotes for refinancing, decided it would be dumb to do right now, and bought a car.

I've also kept up with the triathlon-ing, and since getting the car, have been going to the occasional swim practice in addition to running and biking.

Winter has set in hard here, with almost 20 inches of snow on Dec 19th and occasional refresher snows since. There's a chance that it will be in the 40s during the day later this week, which will help some of the piles of snow melt away, but will also probably mean icy roads at night and in the morning. Good thing I still remember how to get to work without driving :)

The packing for the Luray triathlon weekend in August was successful, and I managed to do the Sprint and Oly distance in the same weekend. I had some significant blisters, but otherwise felt ok. I certainly wasn't "racing" them. I think that this year, I don't need to prove that I can do two days of endurance events, but I think I'll go back to Luray, since that was where I did my first race in 2008.

The running continues to get better. My speed for long runs hasn't improved so much, but I'm certainly capable of jogging for much longer distances than ever before. Right now, I'm getting ready for a half-marathon at the end of March and did a 9 mile run yesterday. I can clearly remember thinking that my friends who were training for a marathon and said "it's not so bad, you just keep doing longer runs" were crazy, as I struggled to jog for a whole 2.5 miles on the treadmill.

Thankfully this week is a recovery week, but supposedly by the end of January, I will have run 10 and 11 miles. eep!

I'm also doing a 5K this weekend and I know from track workouts that I can run 1000m hard-ish, and repeatedly, so I plan to go for 1K then walk a bit, 5 times and may get a new best 5K time. Maybe.

I have lots of goals for the year, including distances for running, biking, swimming, and limits on the number of times I'll go to my local pizza place. There may be a bar chart in the future.