Virtual 5K!

This morning I did a virtual 5K. If you've read many posts, you know that I'm a fan of Katie over at Runs for Cookies.com - she lost about half her body weight, and has kept it off for three years or more. Along the way, she became a runner, and her story reminds me that I can do this. 

 Anyway, today is her birthday, and the second annual RfC Virtual 5K. Basically, you sign up on her site, say you want to run, print out a bib, and then run at some point. You can report your times, be entered in a drawing, and just have a little fun with it. 
This is obviously an "after" picture.

 I set a 37-minute goal. It's been long enough since I've run the entire 3.1 mile distance that I wasn't sure I'd be able to do that -- my only 5K official time (from TWO years ago!) was 39:40ish. I've run 3.1 miles since then, but only used my Garmin to track time. I've never been below 38 minutes. I picked 37 minutes for this one, and knew I'd be happy if it was 37:59!

 I did a tenth of a mile walking warmup, then set the speed at 5.5 mph. I'd chosen a route in Venice to view on the treadmill, because when I watch TV I tend to slow down so I can hear the dialog. I put on my headphones and pretended this was just an outside run. 

 This was the map:

 I wanted to take a picture of the actual view I was getting during the run, but that's really hard to do when you're, you know, running. 

 I won't lie -- my knee was not happy with me and I really didn't know if I could do it. I took a few 10-second breaks just to stretch my knee. But I never went below 5mph -- stayed at 5.5 for the first mile, then dropped it to about 5.3/5.1 for the rest. When I had a half mile left, I bumped it up to 6mph just because I was so close to beating my goal and I didn't want to risk it -- I only stayed there for about a minute, then dropped it back down to 5 or so for the rest.

 The results:


 Hooray! I did it! It was amazing how having that very specific goal in mind kept me from stopping or slowing way down - my  brain really kept trying to tell me I couldn't do this today. It was wrong. :-)

 Thanks, Katie, for the inspiration! 

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