Race Recap: Columbia Remembrance Day 5k

It's 2-for-1 week on our blog! AKA I finally write something and stop leaving all the slack to Rachel the superior blogger. Let's hope that her blogging skills help her in joining the Oiselle family (good luck!)

Yesterday a miracle happened. The stars, planets, sun, and every dust mite aligned in some sort of fortunate accident and I had both the weekend AND the federal holiday off! (You'd think that I'd work fewer federal holidays given that I work for the federal government...)

With just about everyone I know scattering off to the beach for the long weekend, my only plans involved running. To kick off the weekend, I had a delightful run with the one and only Morgan -squirrel aficionado and law school year 1 survivor - around the National Mall. It was the end of a 44mi week (hey that's a lot for my mid-D legs!) and I was really feeling the fatigue. On Monday morning I dragged myself out of bed extra early to do a little local 5k in Columbia, MD. It was 75 and humid with some hills in mile 2 but nothing drastic. Didn't have a good idea of how this would go, but I was hopeful that I'd run something around 20 flat. Took it out quicker than I knew I'd be able to sustain: on purpose. Coach Dad suggested going out at 6 flat and seeing how far I'd make it. I went with this but opted  for a bit slower 6:15. Pretty much totally ran out of gas at about 1.5mi, so the rest of the race was quite miserable/embarrassing and no kick to be spoken of. This is what I like to call a "character building day". In the end, ran something around 20:45, won $35 for my age group, so I broke even and got my first race back out of the way. What I learned from this is that I definitely need to nudge that pain threshold over the next few weeks, I've gotten soft over the past (too many) months it's been since I was seriously training and racing.

Random note: thought I had some Columbia stalkers out there after hearing several people cheering for Robyn. I decided about halfway through the race that the woman running with me must also be a "Robyn" because the only person I know in Columbia is my boss and none of these people had an Israeli accent. She was indeed named Robyn, and with a Y!

Coming soon: Seltzer Intervals or "Lessons on how to scare people off the track"