Running By Myself

Today was a day of firsts for me…okay, two firsts and a third.
I ran my first 10K today and also did my first run alone.

It used to be that one of my little sisters would run with me occasionally and then we’d do a couple fun 5K’s here and there. We did a Holiday run two Decembers in a row, a Halloween run in my home town, and the run my kids’ school hosts as a fund raiser among others. Having a running buddy, especially one to do road races/t-shirt runs with, is fun. It adds to the festive atmosphere and sense of running comradery at these events. There’s someone there to remind you of your goals and push you a little and someone to celebrate with after you cross the finish line.
It should be noted here that we don’t actually cross the finish line together though. She tends to run a little faster than I do. Sometimes we don’t cross the start line together either. Like the last Halloween run we did where she had to use the port-a-potties just before the race started and we couldn’t find each other when the gun went off. She ended up being right by the Headless Horseman who starts the run and I wasn’t even in sight of it or her for the whole race.

But at the end of last summer my running buddy left me. She up & moved to Georgia which is like twelve hours away. How dare she! The nerve of my little sister, having a life of her own.
While I’ve been working on finding (or creating) her replacement, it has yet to happen.
My oldest son runs cross country and has done a few of these runs with me; that’s always fun. But for some reason a lot of the best (closest, cheapest, logistically do-able) ones fall on the weekends that my kids are at their dad’s house and he’s not able to share in my running fun and be my race day buddy. My son also runs (much!) faster than I do and while we usually do start together he leaves me in his dust, usually by the end of the first mile. Even so it’s a fun thing to do together and we still manage to grab a post race picture while we celebrate our successes and commiserate.

The littler guy does the mile runs. He's my running buddy in training.

As I’ve been sort-of training (I say sort of because there’s no actual structured training plan in place…it’s kind of a catch-as-catch-can running plan right now) to do a half marathon this fall I thought it was about time to expand my running horizons and finally do a 10K race. I’ve been running at least six miles once every two weeks for a couple months now so I knew the distance wouldn’t be a problem. Plus there’s one in my town and it happens to be held on a Friday evening which is perfect for me. Even if it falls on a work weekend (which it inevitably does) I can still participate. Run at 7:00pm, work at 11:00pm…perfect!
Okay, maybe not perfect but definitely feasible.
So that is what I did.
I woke up around five thirty this evening, drank a wee bit of coffee, donned my running clothes and jogged the half mile or so into town for my first 10K race…alone.

Post race bathroom mirror selfie...

Yes I know, this is a terrible selfie; I really do need to work on the quality of my selfies. My goal is to be as good at them as this guy. His are really great…I’ve got a long long way to go.

My goal for my first 10K was to finish in an hour …or 66 minutes at most.
Really anything under a 12 minute/mile average pace would be satisfactory. Not too much of a stretch considering the super consistent ten-minute mile average pace I usually keep, however the past couple weeks I’ve had less time to run so it’d been a while since I’d run more than five miles at once. Mid race today I realized that as long as I didn’t finish last I’d be happy with my results. This really was more about getting a 10K under my belt than anything else.
Turns out, I had nothing to worry about.
Not only did I finish in under an hour (59.18), I also finished third in my age division.
YAY! Someone give this girl a prize!
Oh wait, they will give me a prize.

But I have to go pick it up since I didn’t wait around for the results to be announced. Hey, running clothes are thin; it was a breezy evening and the sweat was drying on my body, I was cold so I left before the results were posted.