Law Day Run 5k. Knowing that this race was coming up today has made this week much more challenging. For most, this would just be a little 5k that could be skipped without consequence. It's a little different for me. See, this race has a "Speed Team" division that includes a team of 5 runners, at least 2 of them women. Total times from the runners are added together to get a team score. My law firm, Manning Curtis Bradshaw and Bednar, has won the Speed Team trophy (which is a very nice glass traveling trophy) every year since 1998. I have been on those teams since 2001. In the last several years, the role of recruiting the team has been my responsibility. I draw from the talent pool in the Black Sheep, which includes both fast men and women. The race is about 500 people, and usually our runners perform very well. The course is fairly brutal, a long climb from the front of the law school up through the middle of campus to North Campus drive up to the golf course, south on the flat section through the golf course, and then the downhill section back to the start. The tricky part is there are many, many twists and turns along the way and it is difficult to develop and keep momentum.
Coming into the race this year, I thought I had a decent shot of running well. Last year I won the race in 17:42. Then when I threw out my back on Wednesday, I knew it would be a different story. When I woke up with a cold on Thursday, I knew it really wasn't looking good. I didn't run for a couple of days, hoping that I could give my back some time to heal, and also get over this cold. Both were still bothering me this morning.
I would typically have warmed up at least 4 or 5 miles for a 5k like this, but I thought I would be better off playing it safe with my back and only ran a mile. I think that was a mistake. I should have run longer, particularly with the first mile being uphill. I agree with John Straley that a race with an uphill start requires thorough warmup, otherwise, you just start out wasted and can't recover until its too late.
Surprisingly, the back felt ok during the warm up, just gentle "thud" feeling in the low back, no radiating pain. Things looked up slightly.
When I saw that BJ Christensen was on the scene with a speedy looking buddy, I knew it would be a much different race. I would like to think I could give BJ a chase on the best day, but this was not the best day. When he told me he was running on a speed team for the Paralegal Division, the team trophy race looked more interesting too.
I recruited two teams for this year: Josh Steffen, Mark Holland, Megan Call, Aimee Larkin, and I were the first team. Sam, Casey, Kim, Lindsey and John Straley were the second team. CORRECTION: Sam was on the First team, Mark Holland was on the second team. I didn't know the othe runners on BJ's team. I think they were Westminster runners.
From the start of the race, I just couldn't get it going, and had a nasty anaerobic feeling through the first mile. My energy level was just dismal. It wasn't my back that was hurting, it was my low energy from the cold (and lack of warm up). BJ and friend were 1-2. Josh was 3rd. Another runner was 4th, I was 5th. That was the order much of the race and that's how we ended up. BJ's time was an outstanding 16:23 on this challenging course. Aimee Larkin was 1st woman, Megan was 3rd. Between the two teams, we had about 10 runners in the top 20.
I shouldn't have been racing today, but I'm glad I went out. Not just for myself, but because we did manage to win the Speed Team competition. In the end, our women made the difference. So, I get to keep my job for another year.
After enough little setbacks in the past couple of months, I thought I had finally broken through and got back on track. Now, I'm in more challenging circumstances than I was in before! At least, the back injury is not necessarily running related. A cold, I think I can endure. | 