As I love to brag about these days, I’m back in the running game, and that means I was able to celebrate New Year’s Eve properly this year, by doing the First Run 5k in Portland. I was pretty determined to do it, whether or not I had accompaniment, but it turned out that a few of my 5k loving friends were more than willing to abandon their boozy party to come to a running party with me.
I waited until the last minute to register, because I had thought I was getting sick earlier in the week and wanted to hold off, just in case. So I registered yesterday early afternoon when I was feeling pretty good, but turned out to be about an hour before I got the pre-vomits and my threatening cold decided to finally land. I cursed my decision not to just wait until the race to register, cancelled all other evening plans, and stayed home as long as possible other than a quick visit to my parents’ house to drink all of their Pepto-Bismol.
This plan worked out at least well enough to get me out to the race after I picked them up from the party I bailed on, and the Pepto started kicking in, so things were looking up. I warmed up, had some water, and then went to stand at the start line six minutes early and undo all of the afore mentioned warming up, since it was a few degrees below freezing.
I ran the first mile of the race in 6:28, about 20 seconds too fast, but it was too freezing to run at a reasonable pace. We ran down the west side of the Esplanade, past semi-homeless looking people offering high fives and couples standing on the side, looking over the river and having their midnight makeout. I slowed down a little at mile 2, but then had to start pushing it again about a mile later when my high school chemistry teacher passed me. I overtook her right at mile 3 and came in 4th place for women at 21:21.
After the race I chatted with my chem teacher and was happy to hear her report that she’s only getting faster – good news for me, as I am also an aging person that hopes to continue to get faster despite getting older. Then I got my soup and watched my friends, Kathayoon and Kiera, finish in their much fancier outfits:
Kathayoon and Kiera finishing the First Run 5k!
The bad news is that even after spending a New Year’s Eve running a 5k and not drinking at all, I feel like shit today anyway. Running a 5k in the freezing cold is a bad way to fight a cold, I’m finding out. I even tried to start my resolution of getting up at 6:15 today, but I quickly made the executive decision that NY day and sick days don’t count, and so I slept for three more hours. And then took a three hour nap at 11AM.
I hope you had an amazing NYE and at least don’t feel any worse than me! As soon as I’m back to full health I’ll continue my 5k training plan, to get ready for race #2 in the three-race 5k series I’m doing that I’ve already done one of but neglected to blog about. I also did one 5k a few weeks before that, the Ho Ho or something, and ran it in 21:15. I was going to blog about that too, but then got lazy. Don’t worry though, now you know about all of my 5ks.
See? I did a 5k. I got 2nd place with a time of 21:27 and just barely beat that young girl in front of me in the neon tights.
Miles ran in 2015: 3.5
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