Having mostly decided the night before that I was actually going to do the smart thing and drop to the 5K, the temps that I saw upon waking on race morning almost made me DNS.  32 with heavy fog?? Say what? What was that all about?? On a good day, that would be rough, the morning after so many days of feeling horrible? I just wanted to burrow under the covers and hide until summer.
But I didn’t. I got up and dressed and headed to the race. I had to get to the race early enough back to bib check in and down grade from the half marathon to the 5k.  Never having done that before I didn’t know how it would go- it took maybe 5 minutes. And only that long because the computer network crashed. I then went and hid in my car until the start.
I haven’t “raced” a 5K in so long I can’t even remember and I still didn’t feel good so I wasn’t holding out hope that this was going to work out so well. 😛
Mile 1-9:30 Oops, can’t hold that, least not today. Truth is, I was so damn cold, I felt like I was crawling. The first mile took us on a dirt road back through the vineyard before dumping us out on the street.  I wish we could have stayed on the dirt but we were still running past vineyards and at least the roads were mostly closed.
Mile 2- 10:25 My calves/ achilles were tightening up which I kind of expected as it was cold, I was wearing my Altra’s and the miles had been pancake flat. I don’t like flat. We had turned onto a street and were running past a few houses and mini ranch’s.  I use that term based more on the horses and goats and chickens than the land size. We ran past the one water station before hitting the turn around and making our way back.
Mile 3- 10:26 Oh, the tightness. My legs felt so tight. I was surprisingly feeling ok though in both my stomach and the fact it’s been a while since I’ve run without walk breaks. Like I said in a recent post- they’ve become a crutch and that is not what I meant to happen. However I had a choice to make about my calves. My pace had slowed and was showing 11:20 something.  I could run on with the tightness or I could stop and stretch it out. I stopped and stretched for 10-15 seconds. It wasn’t enough but it helped.  I pushed on back towards the winery. Once I knew I was within 1/4 mile, I pushed play on my Aftershokz with a perfectly cued up song for that finish line push.
Finish- 31:12
Well, hey now, that’s actually way better than I was expecting! And I ran the whole thing! Small victories. 😀 I was nowhere near PR pace and I am fine with that.  The fact that I had a finish line push after 4 days of hell is more than enough for me. Though I should probably give some of that credit to Shinedown‘s latest- Devil. It was just the kick in the pants I needed. It also turns out that stopping to stretch was also the right choice.
5K’s are kind of fun… why did I seem to forget about them???
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The second I knew I had convinced Kate to fly to Las Vegas from Texas and run her very first half marathon, I knew I was running it with her, no matter what.  In the week leading up to the race, she was worried about slowing me down but I said to not even worry about the pace, we were aiming for ‘party speed’. 😎
Recent events moved the start line up to New York New York but the course still went south towards the Las Vegas sign before turning around and coming back. These miles were quiet and dark as a moment of silence for Las Vegas. Which made the cheaters we observed just past mile 1 even worse.  The course was an out and back and this part of the street had a large center divider. Just past the first water station, 3 people just jumped on over to the other side and joined the runners on the way back into town. WTH????! Kate and I and 3 runners behind us were like did we really just see that?
Then came mile 2. We both admitted we could use a bathroom. Waiting in the corrals had been long and there were no port-a -potties near the corrals. So we stopped. And waited forever. Seriously…this was a 20 minute mile.  7 of that was non moving time according to my Garmin. The bathrooms were set up in an odd way that both sides of the course could access them but it didn’t make sense for lines and was causing serious confusion. And apparently we picked the wrong line because the person before me took forever. To the point where the lady in line behind me wanted to knock on the bathroom door.   And can I just say that entering a port a potty in the dark is like entering a scary unknown land? 😛
So we walked.  We embraced the party speed and took in the sights of the Strip. All of the casinos and all of their lights. Counting the CVS’s and Walgreens turned into our version of the license plate game. No, seriously, why are there so many within such a short distance from each other? And why were more people cutting the course?!?!😡
I took a ton of pictures. Except the sketchy mile. The Fremont area was awesome and worth the sketch mile to get there though. We got water at every aid station and Gatorade. We stopped at a medical tent and Kate had them apply some Icy Hot to see if it would help.  Every now and then I would jog in place just to reset my feet. I had worn my old Adidas and they’re too big, not exactly built for walking, my feet were sliding around. Jogging every now and again helped ease some of the pressure my feet were feeling.
We collected our awesome spinning medal and went straight to the med tent so Kate could get ice on her leg. Then we headed out through the long staging area getting the goodies.  Once again, no bags were provided to carry everything but I had come prepared- I had shoved 2 dog bags (clean of course) into my belt so that way we could shove the snacks all in those. Then we headed for our Remix medals and then found a spot to rest before beginning the walk back to the hotel. Where was a taxi when you needed one?
Slacker Runner 