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Who Talked Me into this?

October 10, 2015 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: 45 Sunny

Comments:
I, for reasons perhaps inexplicable, chose to register for and race a 5k.

It was the Aruna 5k for freedom, which was to raise money to end sex slavery, so it was at least a good cause. This was one of the running club's races for the semester so that also nudged me toward doing it. I did not do a single workout and haven't for more than a year.

I did a warmup of about 2 miles with a guy named Josh I didn't know before. I tried to make the warmup a little uptempo since I figured my limiting factor in this would be getting my legs loose enough.

When the gun went off, I went out convincingly in first from the wire. I felt rather odd running fast for the first time in basically forever. My legs felt surprisingly smooth and controlled. I quickly dropped the second place guy and was alone with the lead biker ahead. I was cognizant that I was working harder than usual for a run though I didn't feel destroyed. I felt myself cramping up for the last mile, which was thankfully rather downhill (the course was pretty much out-and-back). I semi-kicked to finish in 16:53 in 1st place generally pleased with it. I could probably still be pretty good if I ever ran workouts.

I cooled down with Stephen and Nic who struggled for different reasons. It was really weird to tear up some random road race without running a workout. The attention of people I have never met is also odd and slightly awkward. Still, running a race I am happy with makes me happy for the rest of the day at least and is a good experience.

This was my first race in 3.5 years. Compared to my college times it looks like it. Yet, I still ran pretty well for not having done a workout in the last 15 months and not a serious one since 2012.