So now I am faced with an ethical dilemma. Do I merely bask in the glow of my second place finish and the accolades that go along with it or do I come clean with all the race statistics? Hmmmmmm?
The race was held at the sports complex on the south side of town. The course wound through the back country roads of Simpson County. I will say it was the "hilliest" course I've run so far, not my usual flat and fast. I'm convinced we ran up every hill in the county! The start was a long gradual incline, quickly followed by three short and steep uphills. I kept waiting for it to level off but it never really did. In spite of all the hills I actually felt good during the run and was okay with my time of 33:18 considering I haven't been running much as of late due to a bad sinus infection. Once again, I got into a groove during the last half of mile two, so mile three actually felt good. I think I need to have a better warm up routine.
After the race I couldn't hang around for the award ceremony but I did chat with a gal who lived about an hour and a half south, originally from New Orleans. This was her first 5K and her goal was to just run the entire race, she succeeded in that - yeah for her!! I asked her about Magee to see if I could get a better handle on the town. She really didn't know anything about it except the fact that it had been hit with a bad tornado in March that destroyed a number of homes. I asked her if she knew how the people made a living and her response was: "I've been living in Mississippi for six years and asked myself the same question when I first moved here. And after all this time I still don't know what they do!" I took it that she was probably retired as she said they moved to Mississippi because her husband was a deer hunter - to my knowledge, I don't know of any "professional" deer hunters, but I could be wrong!
Have had a hard time getting back into the groove of running since this race a couple weeks ago. This week I've stayed on track but the workouts haven't been very encouraging. Today I did my weekly 1.5 mile Duke-loop and it is still taking me 17 minutes - I need to be at 15 minutes if I ever expect to break 30 minutes. Ughhhhhhh. The journey continues!
