I am a lucky girl to be back to racing and back on track!
I finished my first real race since my back injury, and in my own neighborhood to boot! Even though I posted the last post about my pre-race thoughts after I actually ran the race, it sure put things into perspective, and it’s all bright and shiny. Yay!
After the proper whole wheat pasta and Papi-recipe tomato sauce for dinner the night before the race, I went to bed with the jitters. I kept having mini dreams about the race which kept waking me up (all of which I can’t remember the details now, unfortunately). I definitely woke up at 3am-ish feeling dehydrated despite the bottle of water I drank before bedtime and I convinced myself not to get up, that it wasn’t a real feeling, knowing that if I physically got out of bed, I would be up for the next three hours without sleeping.
Why was I so nervous? Afterall, 5K is not super far for me anymore. But I really worried about my time and what would happen if I felt I didn’t ‘perform’ well. Would I be upset and blame it on the hard week? Would I cruise through the race with an unimpressive time but feeling like all smiles? I really had no idea what I would do when the time came.
Morning mate to pep me up
I finally went back to sleep only to wake up as I usually do before a lot of races, with the race blues. I didn’t feel like running. Why push yourself to race when training is just fine as far as health is concerned? Why risk feeling bad (or good)? And, as always, I ignored these thoughts and got my gear on. Fernando also got ready and we got out of the door at 7:30am.
This was the first race since the injury, and it was also the first race that was in my neighborhood that I have participated in. It was super awesome to simply walk and warm up to the Start Line, and see all the runners coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches and head to the same place. It was also the best ever that I didn’t have to wake up 3 hours before the race to subway and bag check and all that. Continue reading
