Confession: I was feeling aspirational when I registered for this race. A bunch of people from Eric's work were going to be in town for annual staff training and wanted to do it. I figured a half marathon early in January would keep me motivated through the Christmas season and I would start my running season early.
Yea, that was totally a great idea until I blew that pesky recurring disk in my back hauling stupid garbage cans up that ridiculous driveway of ours, resulting in weekly visits to my amazing chiropractor and physical therapist, but NOT resulting in quick recovery. And unfortunately, one of the things that exacerbates an already bulged disk is... running. Suck.
So, a week or two before the race, I finally admitted that there was no way I was running a half marathon, so VERY grudgingly I dropped to the 5K. I would have much preferred just cancelling, but that's not an option from this race company. So, I swallowed my pride and made the choice to not end up in traction.
Race day was cold. Like ridiculously, sear your lungs cold. I met up with the other runners, grabbed my race number and gear bag, saw the half-marathoners off, and retreated to my car to thaw out for a minute or two.
When the race started, it was all of 7 degrees. The race course was relatively flat, through a city park with concrete sidewalks. The snow covering wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and the flat course made it relatively easy to manage the icy footing. What was slightly more difficult was managing the icy fingers I was experiencing or the dry-clean sensation in my insides due to the cold. It was over a mile before I could reasonably state that I was warming past the point of frost-bite. Given that there wasn't much to look at, even with Colorado mountains in the near vicinity, it was overly easy to focus on the fact that I was rapidly turning in to Frosty the Snowman.
The upside of a relatively fast, boring course, was that it was flat. I finished in decent, if not fast time for being on the injured reserve list. Additionally, the field was pretty small, and I ended up in 2nd place for my age group. As it turns out, all the other runners I showed up with sans one all placed in their age groups, and two of our runners came in first and second women's overall.
Also, there were good prizes for a post-race drawing, and we all won one. And, there were lots of good coupons and some Bio-Freeze and other samples in the gear bag, and samples of Bio-Freeze are never bad.
After the race I went over and saw MaryJane and my favorite twins until the flare-up from my back got bad enough that I needed to go do something about it...because yay, injury. I was totally off from running for the next several weeks, and am only getting back to it in one mile increments starting this evening. Better than nothing, but suck!
At least I have the Bio-Freeze samples.
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