Monday, November 24, 2008

Race Report: Turkey Trot

 

I have been remiss, my friends. I'm behind on blog posts, e-mail, phone calls . . . looking forward to catching up, this week, so if you've been waiting to hear from me, your wait will soon be over.

In the meantime, let me tell you about my first race as a bandit!

I had a friend in town this week (from L.A.), and I didn't really want to take the time to register for the race in person. And $25 seemed a little steep for a 2-mile race anyway. So I elected simply to show up and run as hard as I could for 20 minutes, take advantage of the post-race food if I could, then take off. My dad was also running the race, so that provided extra incentive.

The beginnings of races like these are always interesting, and consist mostly of dodging ankle-biters, who sprint-walk-sprint-walk, and ask their moms, "Are we half-way there?" after 200 yards. But once I got past the knee-height nuisances . . . well, by that time, it was almost over. Really, how much is there to say about a local 2-mile race?

So let me just say that I finished in 17:08 (according to my watch; bandit, remember). My first mile split was 8:14, and my second was 8:54. I probably could have run the second mile harder than I did, but I don't have the sense of pacing at such a short distance, right now. I was pretty happy with how I ran, although my left calf and right rhomboid weren't. The calf especially locked up extra tight (deep, deep in the calf--I think in the soleus, which is underneath the gastrocnemius), so I've been giving it lots of love (read: punishment) on the foam roller and stretching it out constantly. Although the foam rolling treatment basically consists of me sitting with a foam roller under my leg, as the pressure is too intense to put any weight on it.

That's much more than just a race report. Bonus! Keep an eye open for the second part of the Appearance dialogue which Amanda opened on Saturday. Also, I wrote a guest post for Mizfit that she published on Saturday; go read it!

4 comments:

  1. seriously go read it, People :)
    your guest post was amazing.

    thanks again.

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  2. You rebel you! Hopefully you at least got the food afterwards!

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  3. hahaha! Knee-high nuisances! I love it! You should have stepped on them, or kicked them, or jumped up and down yelling "I won! I won!" at the finish line so they would know that they're not that special. Looks like you ran pretty hard though. Hope that calf feels better soon!

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  4. nice run! hope you had some good eats afterward.

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