Get Fit Slowly

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SWEATS TOGETHER!

All week, the family had been talking about running the Bush Pasture Park Cross Country Series. We were all excited: Megan (3 1/2) for her 500 meter run, Pam for her 3K, and me for my 5K. The plan was to meet another family with two small children for dinner and family exercise. The moms would run the 3K, the girls would run the 500, and the dads would run the 5K. Like I said, we were really excited. However, as the day approached, I lost most of my excitement, the forecast had steadily climbed all week into the upper 90’s. Remember that I’m mostly a treadmill, fan in my face kind of runner. I’m starting to enjoy running more outside, even though it’s a lot more difficult for me. But I don’t like the heat…AT ALL.

As the day approached, my anxiety rose. All of those pre-race jitters came back. To top it off, I haven’t been training for a race, just running for maintenance purposes. And, this time I had competition. The dad I was running with has recently started a training program for the Honolulu Marathon. Supposedly, he’s a slow runner. But to me a slow long distance runner turns into a much faster short distance runner. At the beginning of the race, he looked me in the eye and said that his goal was first to finish, and second to run a 10-minute mile pace for the race. I thought, “hmmm…I should be able to beat 32 minutes easily.” I glanced back at him dubiously.

My suspicions were quickly confirmed. I ran my first mile in 8:08. He was right behind me. I ran my second mile in 9:30. It was hot and I was tiring. Again, he was right behind me. I ran my last 1.2 miles in 9:14. YET AGAIN, HE WAS RIGHT BEHIND ME. After cherry picking the whole race he decided to pass me with about 150 meters to go. I was mad. Really mad. I didn’t want this race to end like the last one where I got passed in the last bit and wasn’t able to regain that position. So I picked it up and ran as fast as I could and passed him back with about 3 meters to go…if that.

I finished in 26:52, which was almost exactly half of my 10K race back in May. There’s no way that I could have kept that pace up for another 5K. I’ll blame it on the heat.

Overall, it was fun, yet hot night. I’ve now run 2 organized races this year, which is 2 more than I’ve run in the previous 33 years. I didn’t enjoy myself as much this time. I’ll take a non-heat-wave race over this one any time.  The best part about the whole night was spending time together with my family in an active way.  I strive to have my kids see me exercising, whether it’s on the treadmill, or at an organized event doesn’t matter.  As long as they know it’s important to be active.

And to the Dad running with me…Next time I’ll follow you.