A Little Victory

I've been wanting (and working) to creep back into a slightly more "runner" level of fitness as opposed to just the general level of "I'm a healthy, happy, grateful human" level of fitness I'd been maintaining over our year of travel and our year of return to home-life.

I registered for the Giants Race to join a friend -- it seemed a bit gimmicky, but why not?

I have disabled young relatives. I have friends and relatives that have died much earlier than the average age in my country.  When facing that reality, sometimes, at least for me, it feels very selfish to have sports-performance-related goals in your 5th decade.  Because, obviously, I'm just grateful to be alive and healthy.

An early morning 10K with a finish on the field?  It's pretty awesome.

And yet.  Today, I ran a 10K with a strong negative split.  And I am a happy lady.

The last mile and 0.31 at paces that were faster than last week's 5K?  Yeah, that felt good!

Overall, I was a bit shocked at how awesome this race was.

The Schwag was hard-core!

Also, the course looked to be quite boring on the map.

I've run this route many times (or so I thought).

But it turns out, they close the Embarcadero for the race!  It is so nice to run so fast on a course that I've only run in the past while on the (certainly broad) sidewalk, dodging pedestrians, pedicabs, unicyclists, cruise-tourists-with-luggage, etc.

The 5K is HUGE!  It starts at 10:50 AM, 3h50 minutes after the 10K/half start, 

or, otherwise known as you can watch it while you brunch!

Here's to creeping back to some semblance of runner fitness.  I'm very much looking forward to the next 2 weeks of training 'til my next 10K.  Healthy food.  Good workouts. All sorts of good goals.  Here's to hoping I can improve on today's performance and slowly inch towards a decent half marathon effort on Thanksgiving.