A good chunk of runners will say that their dream race is Boston.

Mine is Marine Corps Marathon. Or Leadville but that’s another story.

2020 being what it is, I decided to register for the virtual version of the MCM 10K.

Race weekend dawned and oops, I’d been super lazy. Hadn’t run in almost 2 weeks. Longest run previously was the Giants 10k over Labor Day weekend. Oh, I was totally ready for a 6 mile run. Yep. I really wanted to run it on the actual, original race weekend so I sucked it up.

Thankfully, the weather gods gifted us with some almost fall weather so I was even able to be lazy and sleep in on race morning. Yay!

I headed out in the early afternoon and told myself that I would run/walk 3 miles and walk 3 miles. I could walk as much as I wanted but I could never stop. No breaks. Those are my new “race” rules.

I headed for the river path and what used to be my long run route- in other words, an uphill start but a downhill finish. Woo hoo!

I knew that being out of shape, I would tire quickly so instead of running the first half and struggling to finish the last half, I walked the first 3 miles. So, does that mean I walked the part of the route that was uphill and ran the downhill? Yep!

I even found some crowd support!

Not gonna lie, I was feeling tired towards the end but that was really no surprise. And my shoe was coming untied but I refused to stop. Good thing I didn’t fall on that last half mile. That would have been classic.

I finished and stopped to stretch. Oh, I was going to be feeling that later.

Finish- 1:28:34

Hey, and somehow I was faster than I was for the Giants 10K! On a much hillier course. Gotta take those wins where you can find them right?

This was not the MCM of my running dreams but it did help me prove to myself that not all is lost. I just need to get out of my own way.

• Race Day
• Recap