Final race of the season

As you can probably tell by the infrequency of my blog posts, the season has winded down. At the Plymouth 5k, I got it in my head that I wanted to try to race for a PR at the Monster 5k. I pulled a 7:45/mi at Plymouth and I wanted to spend a few weeks concentrating only on 5k speed and try to reach 7:30/mi at Monster. Unfortunately I am not as hard core as I'd like to be and cold, rainy weather, difficult evening schedules and hating getting up early kept me from training the way I had hoped. I did absolutely nothing the entire week before the Monster 5k. So I figured I had to let that goal go until next year. On top of not training, I got a pretty good head cold.

The day started out with Mark racing the Half Marathon and his buddy Steve racing the 10-mile (his first). Mark, even with also taking a few weeks off from training managed a fantastic race, making his goal of a sub 1:40:00. Hey, 1:39:59 (officially) definitely counts :)

Steve had a great time racing the 10 mile and successfully finished the race with a smile.

My race wasn't quite as exciting. I started a little cautiously since my cold wasn't helping me breathe very well. But unfortunately my ankles/shins were heating up. I tried to push through it for awhile but at about mile 1.5, I had to slow down. It was starting to hurt to much. I can push through being tired but not pain. So unfortunately I was feeling like I was hobbling through the rest of the race. Finished in 26:16 (8:27/mi) in pain. I had to try and walk it off and rub out my shins. I was so bummed out. What the heck is the problem? Was the Plymouth 5k time just a fluke? Sigh....

But after the race we snapped a few pictures and caught up with Michael, Cari and Michaela. Michaela was dressed up as the cutest lion but was a little upset since she wanted to go swimming. Hard to convince a 2 1/2 year old that the lake is a little too cold in October. So Dad (Michael) got her a cookie and all was better :)

Below is Steve, myself and Mark at the finish area,

So what's next?

Well there are definitely a few fun 5ks in the potential future over the winter but we are going to try to concentrate on swimming and strength training for the next few months. Unfortunately I wanted to start back swimming today but my head cold is keeping me from breathing so that didn't happen. And as far as strength training, I/we need to work on developing a routine to follow as I'm not very good at just showing up at the gym and figuring something out. Just has never felt effective to do it that way.

Also, there is a potential I'll be starting a new job downtown. I don't want to jinx anything so I'll wait to give you the details. But it would be a major change in my day to day schedule and figuring out how to spend time with Mark, the cats, the dogs, at the pool, at the gym and sleeping may be a bit of a challenge to get figured out since I haven't had to commute for over 3 years now.