Baby Steps (Running)

Taking care not to screw up the running calculator, I ran a hard fast can-I-really-do-this run today, putting a mile warm-up at the front and a half mile at the end with a 3.25m in the middle. I have to pay the entry fee for this weekend's race by end of day today, so just wanted to check.

The wind was wicked (some day I need to write a post about my changed relationship with the weather since I started running), just nuts, all over the place in gusts. I didn't have a lot of optimism.

But I passed the one mile marker at 8:43, which is fast for me. So I kept it up, trying to figure out the best way to pace. At the 1.1 point in this route I turn a corner, always, into wind from the northwest. And today, whew. It was a push for the next half mile, and my heart rate was a little scary. At the two mile mark I'd slowed down to 9:30, although it felt like I was running all out. But in the end I finished with a pace for the whole 3.25m of 8:58.

And for you whippersnappers who might laugh at such times, that would have been good enough for me to place third age-ranked in the Devil Mountain race last year. Granted, the F 45-49 pool sucked in 2007 (for instance, with that time, I would only have placed 5th in the 50-54 age group, 11th in the 40 to 44 group). But still. I have hope that I will finish in the top 20% of the group. A "B" is all I'm looking for.

In other running news, I discovered that, in a few years when I'm 50, if I shave about another minute off my 5K time (which, barring injury or substantial weight gain, it would be weird not to do), I can be a sub-seeded master's runner in the SF Bay to Breakers. And that would be pretty cool.