Posts Tagged With: gallop for the gravy

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!! Since I’ve had to be on the road so many years on Thanksgiving, I now enjoy staying home and most of all, running a race on Thanksgiving Day. This year it was the Gallop for the Gravy 5k held by the YMCA here in Wilmington.
The race fell on my 6th day of exercise, the day before my one day off per week, and my schedule had me running a 2 mile warm-up prior to the race. Needless to say, I was tired but I was ready to run. I don’t enjoy running pre-race, because I have always believed that that warm-up can take my precious energy away from my race. But I did what I was supposed to.  One mile in, I got warmed up so I took my big sweatshirt off.  I don’t know how, but the pins in my garmin strap came out so my watch started flapping all over the place. I haven’t had an equipment malfunction for a race before, but I knew I could just hold the watch if I couldn’t find anything to “fix” it with.  Thank goodness the lady at the Y dug through the front desk and found the perfect solution:  duct tape.

Duct tape can fix almost everything.

It was about 30 degrees out and felt that if I hadn’t done the warm-up, I could have gotten injured because it was just cold.

The race started at 8 am and I took off.  My goal was to run at most, 7:30 minute miles, and I was happy to find my pace was a little faster once I got settled in and past the crowded start.  I haven’t run a race in those temps before, so I was surprised to find that my lungs were a little, how do I say… sore?  Whatever it was, it was slightly uncomfortable, but I don’t think it had any affect on my finish time.  I was very please to finish in 22:17.

I had heard the race had cool bobble heads and a lot of pie giveaways, so I stayed for the awards, hoping to at least place in my age group.  I was thrilled to find that won First Place Masters Female and got to take home my own bobble head and chocolate chess pie.  I have never had chess pie before so when we dug into it, we found it was delicious!!!!  I was also very happy to find that my shin splints appear to be fully healed.  I’ve been doing speed work, longer mileage, and with all of that and a race, no pain when running or after.  I’ve been doing everything I can to help them heal and to prevent them from returning.  Let’s hope it works.

1st Place Masters Female

Thanksgiving was a wonderful day that I got to spend with my family.  Bonus was that we drove less than a mile to my sister’s house where we spent time with her and her husband…. a dream come true.  I have so much to be thankful for and spent the remainder of the weekend, sleeping in, doing my workouts, watching Christmas movies, drinking wine, and just being.  It. Was. Perfect.

Now that December is here, I’m enjoying a few last weeks of “light” training before the real Boston Marathon training starts.  I’m so excited, beyond thrilled, and have very high hopes for my running future.  The sky is the limit as far as I’m concerned.