Run Thru The Vines
This morning I participated in the 5k race at Run Thru The Vines -- a very fun event where the race begins and ends among the grape vines of the Messina Hof Winery. I've been to this event several times before as a photographer for Rec Sports, but the last time I ran any distance as part of a competition was my junior year of high school and it was only a half mile. Given that and I'm still much larger than what folks at these events consider your typical runner I'm happy with my finish.
I was the 100th finisher and came in at 29:32. I finished by myself basically so there wasn't anyone for me to run down at the end. To give you an idea of how slow that time is let me list a few folks that I noticed finishing ahead of me... one of the guys from my triathlon class (more on that in a sec) and his dog, several 10-12 year old girls, and a bad ass mama that pushed her toddler around the course in a jogging stroller. I wasn't beat by the cute little red-headed 6-year-old boy that was in front of me most of the race. I pushed past him with about a half mile to go and didn't look back.
I'm still thrilled to have finished in the top 100 and with a time that was a little faster than my target time for the upcoming BTU Tri-o de Mayo triathlon. That's right, my stupidity doesn't stop with wanting to run a 5k.
Towards the end of last semester I got the idea that I wanted to train for a triathlon to lose weight. My initial thought was to train for a quarter-distance Iron Man triathlon (0.6 mile swim, 28 mile bike, 6.55 mile run), but training on my own I was only wanting to swim and bike and leave the run out of it. I signed up for a triathlon training course at the Rec Center and we're 6 weeks through the 9 week program. The distances of the BTU triathlon are shorter (0.3 mile swim, 14.5 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) than my initial idea, but I realized quickly that this is much more my speed right now and something I'll probably be able to finish and feel good about.
So after biking the full distance yesterday in a time I'm very happy about and successfully finishing the 5k today and scoring a sweet t-shirt for the event I'm feeling pretty confident about where I'll be in 3 weeks. I know I won't win it, but right now my goal is completing, not competing.
I was the 100th finisher and came in at 29:32. I finished by myself basically so there wasn't anyone for me to run down at the end. To give you an idea of how slow that time is let me list a few folks that I noticed finishing ahead of me... one of the guys from my triathlon class (more on that in a sec) and his dog, several 10-12 year old girls, and a bad ass mama that pushed her toddler around the course in a jogging stroller. I wasn't beat by the cute little red-headed 6-year-old boy that was in front of me most of the race. I pushed past him with about a half mile to go and didn't look back.
I'm still thrilled to have finished in the top 100 and with a time that was a little faster than my target time for the upcoming BTU Tri-o de Mayo triathlon. That's right, my stupidity doesn't stop with wanting to run a 5k.
Towards the end of last semester I got the idea that I wanted to train for a triathlon to lose weight. My initial thought was to train for a quarter-distance Iron Man triathlon (0.6 mile swim, 28 mile bike, 6.55 mile run), but training on my own I was only wanting to swim and bike and leave the run out of it. I signed up for a triathlon training course at the Rec Center and we're 6 weeks through the 9 week program. The distances of the BTU triathlon are shorter (0.3 mile swim, 14.5 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) than my initial idea, but I realized quickly that this is much more my speed right now and something I'll probably be able to finish and feel good about.
So after biking the full distance yesterday in a time I'm very happy about and successfully finishing the 5k today and scoring a sweet t-shirt for the event I'm feeling pretty confident about where I'll be in 3 weeks. I know I won't win it, but right now my goal is completing, not competing.
posted by Timmie Smith at 11:23 AM
7 Comments:
Personally I think that is a great time for 5k especially if you haven't run competitvely in so long. Keep up the training and you'll get to your goal!
Hey, Timmie, way to go! I just wouldn't advertise the mommy-with-the-stroller thing. You can leave that part out.
I'm sure that dog was bred to run. And I bet you're better than those 10 year old girls in Computer Science
And you DID beat the redheaded stepchild! ;-) (too easy...) Way to go on training yo, way more ambition than me. I bought a bikini but that's about as far as i've gotten so far to THAT goal. :-p
Shells,
When are you coming to the city? We will let you wear your bikini?
For the class that you are doing are ya'll using any kind of book, this summer I'm gonna be bored cuz well other than the 9 online hours I'm taking, I've got little else going on. Send me the info, I've decided, gardening and getting in shape is what I'm gonna occupy my time with. We killed the yard this last year and I got to revive it.
The book I got with the program is "Triathlon Training Basics" by Gale Bernhardt. I've opened it once to read the section on nutrition. It doesn't really tell you what to eat, but instead gives guidelines on calorie consumption during the event and gives you an idea of how much you need to hydrate and eat during training and competition to obtain your goals.
It does look like a good book. It has several trainging programs in it for different fitness levels. The beginning program looks roughly like what we've done in our training.
The reason I haven't read the book is that when I show up for my organized workouts I'm told exactly how far to swim, what drils to do, how far to run, and our time on the exercise bikes is lead by one of the coaches who is one of the cycling fitness instructors at the Rec Center. They even have told us when to do workouts on our own if we're not where we want to be. In the future when I train on my own I do plan to follow this book and supplement with the workout information I have from the training program this semester.
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