AM: Just an early morning treadmill run at the gym. Early as in 11:00 AM. Ouch. Anyways, I knew we were running the Beat the New Year 5K later, but I still wanted a few extra miles for the day. I did a short warmup, then my little half-mile-on-half-mile-off workout until I hit 5.5 miles. 37:50 PM: Beat the New Year 5K. First of all, it was freaking cold. Second of all, the roads were snow-packed. These factors combined to mostly kill my and Catherine's motivation, and if we hadn't pre-registered we might not have gone (Catherine's note: we definitely would not have gone). But we went, if for the T-shirt more than anything, and I think we're glad we did. At least now we can say we've done it. For a while I've thought it would be cool to tick off the sub-17 goal minutes before the year ended. But then I got injured, and then I stopped doing anything that remotely resembles 5K training, so I knew it would take a miracle for that to happen. And when we heard about the snowy roads, I knew sub-17 was absolutely impossible for me at the time. So I decided to just run with Catherine, but she would have none of that, so when they said go I found myself charging off the front with the lead group. Almost immediately we were running down a slippery hill on the east side of Sugarhouse Park (I wore trail shoes--great idea), and I found myself in a group of eight or nine. But as we started up the hill on the other side I started coming off the back and even if I had the ability to push harder, I didn't have the motivation. Halfway through our first lap, I found myself as first straggler, running alone behind a group of five. I settled into my groove, and halfway through the second lap I caught and passed one of the lead group who had had a moderate blowup. As far as I can tell, he's the only runner I caught. I crossed the line in about 18:41, according to my watch (they were only taking time for the winners), which I believe was good for fifth, then I wiped the snot and drool of my face and turned around to jog the course backward until I found Catherine. I met up with her at the start of the out-and-back, and we ran in together. Understandably, Catherine was not in race mode, and we enjoyed a pleasant conversation together as we ran. She beat the new year, too, with a minute to spare. My family always celebrates the new year with donuts, which apparently is some sort of Scandinavian tradition, so after the race we went to Krispy Kreme for donuts and hot chocolate. The dining room was closed, but the drive-through was open, so my first "meal" of the year was a hot chocolate (not too bad) and a custard donut (pretty freaking good).
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