Jingle Bells

Today's scheduled workout was a one hour warm up run followed by running the Jingle Bell 5K. When I woke up, I first checked the weather. The reported temperature was 5 degrees fahrenheit. I thought about going back to bed but instead put on my cold weather running gear. It had snowed the night before so the roads were snowpacked and icy. This made driving to the race site a bit stressful.

I arrived safely to the race. Luckily, race registration was inside South High School. At least I wasn't cold while paying the race entry fee. I saw Steve just after I picked up my timing chip. He said the group was meeting to do a warm up run around 9:00 am. It turns out that only six of us were crazy enough to show up in below freezing weather to do the race.

For the warm-up, we ran around Washington Park. I was a little worried about how my legs would react to running after a 12 mile run yesterday. My knees, especially my left knee, have been bothering me after longer runs. I was glad that my legs felt okay - not great but I was able to run. I was happy that we stopped a few times for various team members to make restroom pit stops as I was feeling okay but not great during the warm up run. I was also glad that the pace was slow since I couldn't have keep up with the others had the pace been any faster.

As we warmed up, Steve talked to me about how to run the course. He pointed out the curves in the road and how they should be run. He also talked about starting out relaxed and not going out too fast. The primary goal for today's race was to negative split it. There were also time goals set in the traning plan of 8:30 for the first mile, 8:20 for the second mile, 8:10 for the third mile, and 45 seconds for the last .1 mile.

I tried to start the race relaxed. I probably started a little too relaxed. The first mile was slightly over 9 minutes, which was more than thirty seconds off the time goal for the first mile. The second mile was better at around 8:25 as was the third at around 8:20. The last tenth was around 45 seconds. I would have liked the first mile to be closer to the time goal. However, I was happy that I negative splitted the race, had enough left to pick up the pace at the end, had no significant leg issues, and got to experience what it is like to race in the cold. I was also happy that my teammates who raced all had great results. Sonja was the second overall female, Michelle was the fourth overall female (and a PR notwithstanding the conditions), and Tyler was 23rd overall. Of course, Steve was 5th overall. Afterwards, we went to the Handlebar Grill for a well deserved breakfast.

Tonight, my left knee is a little tender. It is a good thing that a swim is the scheduled workout tomorrow rather than a run, especially since it is once again going to be cold. Overall, this has been a good training week. Before the week started, I was concerned about how my legs would react to all of the scheduled running. The tenderness in my knees was much less than expected. I'm hopeful that maybe I've turned the corner with my leg issues.