2012 Race For the Cure 5K

The privilege of parking on Meredith campus was
balanced by the pain the parking lot inflicted on my feet

I really did not need this. This was my 7th race in the last 9 weeks, which is about 7 too many.

I was looking forward to taking a break from racing in June and actually do some nice, easy running.
My "REST, RACE, REST" training plan is only netting about 20 miles a week, and that is just not going to cut it for my showdown with Barefoot Josh at The Scream Half Marathon.

But when you live with a serial racing addict, you get roped into a lot of unnecessary racing.
She will sit in front of her laptop in the morning, highly caffeinated, scouring the calender for empty spots she can wedge in a 50K for us.

For this race, Shannon had two very important reasons that she needed to run it. And they trumped any "Race for the Cure" political controversy.

#1 - Running Speed Benchmark

She had done this race the previous 3 years, and wanted to see if she could run it faster.
Apparently she wanted to see if her rigorous 3 week training plan of laying on the couch watching all 85 episodes of "Ugly Betty" was going to cut minutes off her 5K time.

#2 - Exclusivity

Since Shannon works at Meredith College, she is allowed to park on campus for this race. Driving in the back entrance makes her feel privileged and special. Never mind that we could just go to any other local 5K and actually park much closer to the start line.

I pulled this giant nail out of my foot. Barefoot running advocates will deny it,
but you will get around 4 to 5 major foot punctures... per mile.

So I let her sign me up for yet another race, thinking I would just run it barefoot, which would slow me down and keep me from wearing myself out too much.

Well that plan didn't work out too well.
I ended up running way too fast, trying (and failing) to catch some 3 foot tall child who looked like he borrowed his dad's shoes. The rough asphalt on Hillsborough was uncomfortable, but did not succeed in slowing me down at all.

I ended up with a 19:50, which is pretty much full throttle for me these days, and probably means another few days off. The photo above shows I am getting callouses which means I am running faster than I should.

Shannon had a decent run with a 21:28, which is a strong endorsement of "Ugly Betty" training.
She no doubt could have run faster if she hadn't been burdened with the lack of a camera. She forgot to grab it this morning, so there are no photos from the race. It's like it didn't even happen!

This is (I hope) my last race report before "The Scream".
Maybe I will try to do some other types of posts, like my experience of actually running on a week day.