Underground running

Today I came to three realizations:

1. I am not as fast as I used to be.

2. I am not in as good as shape as I used to be.

3. Going to a run alone sucks!

As most of you know, I love to run. For most of my life, I was pretty OK at running and could go at a pretty good pace for some distance. I would get into how far I used to run and how fast I used to go but it would get boring pretty quick.

So why am I writing about this? On Wednesday of this past week, I received an email from my work indicating that they had paid for 100 people to participate in a 5k/10k run today. There was no way in heck that I was going to pay $30 to jog 3.1 miles but if someone else was going to pick up the tab, I was all for it.

The run was in one of the local storage caves where the temperature was much warmer (70 degrees) than the 20 degrees outdoors. The run is called the GroundHog run and has been run for the past 25 years. As I rolled out of bed this morning at 6:30, I looked out the window and asked myself what I was doing as I watched flakes of snow falling from the sky. Traci was snuggled in the warm blankets and was still recovering from Friday; however, was doing better and planning on heading to Church at 9am.

I arrived at the caves around 8am and signed in for the 5k that started at 9am. This is the first time I have even gone to a run alone and plan on not doing it again. I kept looking for a familiar face in the crowd.. no luck. Cerner, the company I work for, is a corporate sponsor so I had access to nice restrooms and free food and drinks. As I moped around sipping free water, a co-worker spotted me and we chatted for a bit. I didn't run with her as her pace was about a min faster than mine.

I felt really good for the first mile, OK for the second, crappy for the last and the remaining .10 of a mile I tried not to die. :-) My run time was 30:56 and I came 58/95 for my age group... Old man group.

I have been running a couple of times a week and working out about the same. I plan to pick it up a bit and see if can improve my time in the next couple of months.

Wish me luck!

Bill