My farthest run ever

My farthest run ever.

Yesterday was my 10k race, and it was great. Races are always great. You feel rejuvenated, confident and excited after a race, like you have actual done something. Leading up to the race on the other hand is a different story.

I don't know why this always happens, but every race I have run I have never actually trained or prepped for. I always slack off, and then race day comes, I race (probably not as well as I could if I would have trained), and then I am encouraged and then I do really good for a while afterwards; maybe I just need race more! This week training went ok, I had a wonderful 5.3 mike run where I crushed all off my PR times. I still didn't eat right or train as much, but things are changing. I have to get ready for my main race of the year, the duathlon, my first multisport race. So nutrition is picking up and has a plan, and training is kicking into high gear.

Anyway back to the race. The race was fun, like every race, and odd, let me explain. First of all the race had a start time of 8:15 pm, a night race. It felt really weird waiting around all day for a race. Usually you wake up early and race, and you feel great the rest of the day, yesterday I didn't know what to do with myself. But eventually when ended up leaving about 6pm and headed to Joplin. An hour there and we are ready to go. We drive through these tiny streets in this neighborhood until we drive up on a bunch of cars parked all the way up and down the street and we figure, "this must be the place." We find a spot, go get our registration packets, pin on our numbers, take a couple pictures and start getting warmed up.

A little before race start we find our spot near the start, the gun sounds and off we go with only one goal, keep the feet moving until we cross the finish line. The 10k racers started a little before the 5kers and at the beginning we crammed 60 people and a 5 foot wide gravel path. After a couple hundred yards it widened a little and the field stated to disperse, and we started to get comfortable. Mile one was great, mile 2 was good, and then mile 3 for me seemed to go on, and on, and on. It was about this time it started getting really dark with the trees hanging overhead. You started to lose sight of the ground and just kept running, waiting and looking in the distance for the turn around. I knew once I reached the turn around I would be on my way back, and nothing could stop me then.

We hit the turn around and reached mile 4, and then it started getting pitch black. The only thing you could see where the little glow stick lanterns on the ground and the ones on my wrist, but we kept moving forward. It was around 4.5 miles my wife told me her knees were hurting pretty bad and asked if we could walk for a second, I said of course, and we walked for about 2 seconds until she said, "well that isn't making them feel any better, we might as well be running!" I was very proud of her for pushing through the pain and running her best and farthest race.

We continued on and at about mile 5.5 you could tell our legs were tired. We were swerving all over the track in the pitch black, but we knew the end was just up the road and this was the farthest we had ever run. We came up on the finish and were cheered on by some glow stick covered people as we ran across the finish line. What an accomplishment. We finished with a time of 1:10:17, without taking a break or walking. 2 years ago I thought running 3 miles was the most ridiculous thing ever, and now a half marathon doesn't seem so bad.

A few things I learned from this run.
-I don't like waiting all day for a race
-don't wear Nike frees on a gravel trail (I didn't, my wife did)
-your body can do way more than your mind thinks it can
- always thank God for when he brings in cool weather and it's not 106 degrees

At the finish line with my best friend, training partner, and wife

Some get beer after a race, I get ice cream