Midnight 10K

I've kept putting this post off because something (like work) always came up that I needed to get done.  No more!  I'm finally writing!  Not that there's anything in this post that's super exceptional that I just have to record, but it keeps hanging over my head.  Unfinished business.  So here goes: 

 

On July 3 at about 9:00 at night a few family members and I headed north about 20 miles to Dunedin to the Kiwanis Midnight Run.  I ran the 5K last year and signed up for the 10K this year.  This was my first 10K since December, which was my first one ever.  I had run 6.2 miles in training a couple times but not a lot.  I felt prepared, though.  I picked up my race packet and shirt and was able to get one that was size large.  Not XL.  Not XXL.  Not XXXL.  Just L.   

 

Do you know how happy that makes me feel?!

The 5K started a little before midnight and the 10K started about 12:30.  I began the course running with my friend Lisa, but she quickly outpaced me.  Go Lisa!  I kept running at my happy pace.  Here comes a drawbridge.  So cool to run over the metal grate and see the water directly below me!  Ahhhhh!  Downhill!  Such fun!  A breeze!  Okay, now it's flat, hot, and humid again.  Blehh!  We headed toward Honeymoon Island State Park and, just like last year, it was nice to leave the city lights behind and run toward moonlight on the water and quietness.  The 5K runners turned around at some point and the 10Kers kept on running.  We entered the park and it got even quieter.  Mmmmmmm!!!  Love it!  There was less of a breeze now, though, because of woods around us.  Still nice.  I wanted to hear the quiet so I turned off my MP3 player.  I heard frogs so I quickly turned the music back on and made sure I stayed near the middle of the road.  I don't like am irrationally terrified of frogs.  They're disgusting, ugly, gross, and creepy, and I have my three younger brothers to thank for this irrational fear.  I know frogs can't hurt me, but I'd hurt myself trying to get away from one!  I moved to the center of the road so that if one was fool enough to jump onto the road from the shoulder, I'd see it (hopefully) and have time to scream and do a funny weird little dance to get out of its way. 

Ahem.  Moving on.  I tried a couple more times to run without music but all I heard was frogs.  At one point I felt a sharp pain in my knee, but I prayed and asked God to heal and strengthen it.  The pain was gone in a few steps.  Thank You, God! 

There were luminaries lining the road since there are no light posts out on the island.  Very pretty.  At the turnaround point there was a van parked sideways with a large American flag displayed on it and they were playing Bruce Springsteen's Born In The USA (since it was July 4th).  Cool!  That gave me a little more momentum. 

 

I finished the 10K in 1:23:09 at a 13:23 pace.  That's almost a minute slower than the one I did in December, but this one was run at midnight after a full day of being awake and working (I got about a 2-hour nap in the afternoon).  I had run the first part of this course in last year's 5K, but otherwise it was unfamiliar.  I ran the December 10K course at least twice a week for a couple months in training, so I'm pleased with my results. 

I Ran The Full 10K Distance!

I was supposed to run for 80 minutes on the 10K course this morning (Friday) and walk the rest, but I didn’t. 

I ran 82 minutes and the entire course!  The 80 minutes came during a song called Yes We Can by Me In Motion.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1oEgZSFXeI

How could I stop with a song like that playing?!  I decided to run until that song was over but then I was so close to the finish line I decided to just run the whole way!  One hour 22 minutes and 40 seconds. 

I’m tired now. 

But my God can do big things.  The last day or so I’ve wondered why I signed up for this 10K race and why I didn’t do the 5-mile run on Honeymoon Island next month or the 8K at Gasparilla in February first and work my up to a 10K.  I didn’t think I was ready and that I had taken too big a leap.  I was definitely feeling my humanity and my femininity.  What had I gotten myself into?  God knew, though.  And He knew that He was ready even though I didn’t think I was.  I just needed to get myself out of the way and let Him be the strength in my legs. 

I’m inviting all of you to my race next Saturday, December 15, at 8:00 a.m. at Coachman Park in Clearwater.  It would be so encouraging to have friends and family spaced out along the course in addition to at the start and finish line.  Signs are welcome!  Let me know if you can be there.  Here’s the link:  http://www.saynotodrugs.com/

And here's a map of the course. 

 

http://www.saynotodrugs.com/images/content/pdfs/2010-course-map.pdf

Thoughts After My First Midnight Run

It’s my normal pattern to run early in the morning as soon as it gets light, about 6:00.  My first official race was at 7:00 a.m., my second race was in the evening after dark, my next two races were on the beach at sunset, and now I can say I’ve run at midnight!  I ran under a full moon last night from 11:25 p.m.-12:08 a.m. 

This was a growing race and not just because they had a record number of people register.  It was a growing and stretching race for me.  With my first race I wanted to know the course well in advance so I could run it and be very familiar with it.  I don’t like surprises.  With my second race, some of the course was the same as my first one, but I still had to find out the exact start, route, turnaround, and finish.  My beach races were in straight line, but I still observed one last year without running it and didn’t run until this year.  With this midnight run I saw where the course started and finished and that was all.  Really, it’s not like I’m going to be leading the pack and need to know for that reason!  So for me to not bother trying to learn ahead of time the exact route was a step up from having to know everything possible about a situation.  It was…faith?  It was going with the flow, which can be a problem for me.   

We started off and had a very slight incline over some water after, I’m guessing, 2/10 of a mile.  Hardly noticeable.  We ran some more and as I looked ahead I could see the crowd like they were higher than I was.  Were they on a bridge or a hill?  We’re in Florida and on the coast so hills are an extremely slim possibility.   It was a bridge, the Dunedin Causeway. 

About a mile into the run was the beginning of the bridge.  I’d never run a bridge before, but I have now!  It really wasn’t very hard, but then it wasn’t a very steep bridge.  I liked running over the metal grate at the top and seeing the water below.  It was such a gradual decline that I hardly noticed it on the way down.  Oh, I just remembered that I’ve run the incline on part of the Pinellas Trail to an overpass.  I forgot about that. 

Anyway, the run continued toward Honeymoon Island.  I worshipped as I looked at God’s creation under a full moon with a minimum of human influence (lights).  It was almost the way He intended it to be.  The only sounds were feet pounding the pavement, lungs breathing heavily, and the occasional very breathy word or two.  After reaching the turn-around point at 20 minutes (good time), I saw the bridge again.  I wanted to run it up and down both ways, so if I was going to walk at all, the time to do it was before I got to it.  I walked for two minutes then began running again.  I easily climbed the bridge running, ran over the metal grate again, and then ran down the other side.  One bridge up and down up and down conquered!  Bring on another! 

I had passed up the first water station, which was ridiculously close to the start line in my opinion, because drinking water while I run upsets my stomach and I don’t need to for just a 5K.  On the way back, though, I decided to get water and pour it on my face.  Why had I never thought of that before?  Oh well, live and learn and improve.  I got a cup, poured it on my face, and man did that feel good!  (Why did I not take up swimming instead of running?)  The end was in sight after that, and I kept running. 

This had been my most spiritual official run in that I had been praying frequently thanking God for giving me the ability to run at all, protecting my knee that had been giving me very brief twinges of pain earlier in the evening, giving me this beautiful creation to enjoy, good-functioning lungs, a full moon, water, breeze,...  I had to sing my “Keep Running” song only a handful of times. 

As I turned from the road into the parking lot where the finish line was I started to pick up speed.  I always do that in official runs but struggle to do it in practice.  I crossed the finish line after 43 minutes and 11 seconds,

a little slower than I had run the last few times in practice but this run included a bridge both ways so I wasn’t too disappointed.  I’m happy and look forward to shaving more minutes off my time and running more bridges!

I came in 81st out of 99 in my age group.  I'm moving up!  I had a per-mile pace of 13:54.  These numbers are a little different from what I reported on Facebook, but I got them from the official results.  The FB numbers were just what I saw last night immediately after the race.