Today I ran in my fifth 5K this year. I have one more for 2013. My oldest daughter was signed up for the race so I decided to go ahead and run with her. But she got very sick and then ended up having to work. My younger son took her place and ran instead. He really isn't a runner but he does run really fast when he does run. He has been going to the gym four times a week with his dad for the past several months. He has built up a LOT of strength in that time. He has a really hard time running at a slow pace. He is more of a sprint runner. But he is very competitive and likes to win. He said he was third until he was at the 2 mile mark and had to slow down because his lungs were hurting. I know that if he ran regularly it would build up his lungs like he is building up the rest of his body. I hope he will do that and we can run together again. I love it when my family runs WITH me.
I ran one time last week and then it froze over for DAYS. I was not able to go out and run during the rest of the time leading up to this race. I was a bit sluggish at the beginning. I did have to walk from time to time but I did my best not to allow myself to walk for very long before I set a new goal of what to run to. I would pick a "target" to reach before I would allow myself to walk. I did my best to pick a target that was far away. It is not my goal to walk a 5K. I want to run as much of it as I can. I may run slowly most of the time but I want to put forth as much effort as I am able. When possible, I would push myself to go a bit faster than I had before to make up some time from the periods of walking.
Since this was a run where they throw colored powder at you, it got pretty messy. We didn't get as messy as we did for the Color Run in April of this year. We were a mess that day. I didn't have sun glasses today to hide my eyes so I closed my eyes as I ran through it. My son didn't realize it was going to be like that and he got a big chunk thrown into his eye, which was not fun for him. He always ended up with a bunch of it in his mouth when he tried to drink something after the race. I love doing the Color Run so I think I will stick with just ONE "color" run a year, if any. My hubby hates the mess in his Jeep afterwards.
They didn't have the miles marked and my tracker wasn't working. I never really knew when one mile ended and the other one began. I think that would have helped. It always does when I am running by myself because I can tell myself I am "this far" or I only need "this much more". They didn't have the Turkey Trot marked either and my tracker wasn't working. It doesn't seem to want to work at the Ballpark area for some reason. Pandora did work this time. I had made a playlist on my phone and when I tried to play it things went nuts. It would play a few seconds of one song and then change, over and over again. I finally shut it off and tried Pandora. Thankfully, that worked. It is easier for me to run when I have music to listen to and keep me going.
There were quite a few parts of the race that were up hill. Some where down hill and I tried to take advantage of that time and run a bit faster. It made me think about our run in August. That half marathon is going to have a few miles that are uphill. That means I NEED to run uphill HERE to get used to it. I have heard it helps build your strength and speed if you run uphill. I need both.
Looking at the pictures of myself makes me a bit more sad than I already am about my weight. But it will be fine when I can see how much I have lost in the next year and beyond. I will be able to see how far I have come. At least I ran the race and did something healthy. At least I am taking steps to change the way my body looks instead of just living with it or worse yet, gaining more from lack of effort.
I will share more about my weight training in a later post. My husband gave me a workout to do and I was sore for three days afterwards....
Changing my life one day at a time.
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