Building Baselines

Today was the Garden State Plaza 5k Race.  This particular race was extremely meaningful to several of the participants.  First off were the 20 or so runners who graduated my running club’s Beginner 2 Finisher running program.  This was the culmination of 10weeks of hard work and I tip my hat to each of them and hope that this was the first of many races for them.  Second were Lori and Jordan for different reasons.  Normally I would run with Jordan and we would let Lori run ahead at her own pace.  Today however, my coach wanted me to actually race, more on that in a minute, which left Lori and Jordan to run together.  Unfortunately, Lori cramped up and had to let Jordan run ahead.  Although in noticeable pain and discomfort she never gave up and finished the race strong, a true demonstration of her newfound strength and mental fortitude.  Then there is Jordan who ran the entire race, never taking a walk break and finished in 35:06, good enough for a two and a half minute personal record.  The look of pride in himself as he crossed the timing mat was something that I will never forget.
Since this blog is about me, I guess we should discuss that too....lol
My coach’s original plan was for me to run the first mile of today’s race as fast as I could, a time trial of sorts, and then to run miles 2&3 at a hard, but comfortable pace.  I spent the better part of the week stressing about this plan.  Knowing that running that hard early on would cause me to “blow up” just didn’t sit well with me and was causing extreme agita.  The thing about a great coach is his or her ability to sense the discomfort in their clients and make changes to the plan.  That’s exactly what happened, he decided yesterday that we should simply run today’s race as a hard effort 5k to get a baseline.
I clearly wasn’t “race ready”, but I wasn’t supposed to be, right?  Today was all about setting a starting point, a result to judge future progress from.
And so I finished in 28:46, feeling good about my effort and knowing that this is simply the start of great things to come.
So, this evening I sit on my couch enjoying a Makers Mark on the rocks, my FIRST in almost 5 years and I will tell you, it tastes delicious!!!!
Tonight I’ll relax and enjoy myself, enjoy my day of rest tomorrow and then get back at it hard on Tuesday.

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