Shaking the dust off

After taking a bit of a winter break from running, I got a new pair of Nike Lunar Glides for my birthday and started to hit the pavement again. They are bright blue. Neon blueberry. Super obnoxious, but feel like I’m running on clouds.

Last December I had been convinced to sign up for a local 15k race, which was basically forever ago. I kept denying it was steadily approaching, until at the beginning of the month I flipped through my calendar and saw that third Sunday circled in red marker. 9.3 miles through the Biltmore Estate.

I was good with five miles. I could run a fast five in my sleep at that point, but 9.3 was a bit daunting. But I was told the course was relatively easy, with both big climbs within the first four miles, so I kept up with my training runs and felt strong going into the race weekend.

My friend, Jen, picked me up before six that rainy Sunday morning, both of us waiting for our coffee to kick in and hoping that once the sun came up the rain would stop. It wasn’t pouring, merely drizzling, but still wet enough that I had to wrap my iPod Nano into my running pants and trust that my mix was good enough to not need manual flipping. We weaved our way up to the front of the starting group, hoping that would avoid us having to leapfrog past all the slower runners. But when the marshal came out to welcome us and give us last minute notes on the course, I realized how many runners were behind me. And then right before he blew the horn, he eyed the ones in the front and said, I trust all of you are less than seven-minute milers, right? And then he pressed down his thumb and BAM! the race was underway.

And then I started moving my legs. Fast. And then the true less-than-seven-minute-milers nearly trampled me. Good Lord! Those people were so fast. It almost felt like that scene from The Lion King when the stampede of wildebeests took out Mufasa.

But instead of climbing up a tree and throwing rocks at the fast runners passing me, I kept up my slower pace and pushed up the first hill. And then the second. Jen was totally out of my sights at this point, so I dialed into my breath and my playlist and let my mind and my legs do the work.

I had never run the course before, and when I was passing mile markers I was unaware of how fast I was going because my iPod/watch was snug in my waistband. I didn’t really have a finish-time goal, but wanted to end at less than a ten-minute mile pace. And while the first three miles felt strong, the last three miles felt awful. I had to stop and walk a few times, which always makes me feel defeated. It was just wooded turn after wooded turn for the last mile, and then once I heard the cheering of the finish line I picked up my pace for the final hill.

I finished in 1:25:34, which was a 9:11-mile pace, and 17^th in my age group. And considering how lame I felt the last third of the race, I was thrilled with that time. In fact, I felt pretty awesome.