A great day for Team West…

Sometimes it’s important to put yourself second and celebrate the accomplishments of someone you love.  For me, that was this morning.  I was terribly frustrated to not be running the Hospital Hill Half Marathon this morning that I was registered for, but there was no room for complaining or feeling sorry for myself.  I had more important things to do.  My wife was set to run the Hospital Hill 10k as her first 10k ever.  You have to respect her toughness.  She picks one of the hottest and hilliest in the area to run her first 10k!  Her training was sporadic since her schedule’s been pretty hectic, but she woke up ready to go this morning.  She had a positive attitude and was shooting for a sub-1:45 time.

In the left lane are the #1 & 2 finishers in the 1/2 Marathon

We got up early and headed out to the race.  The best indication that I was not running, we showed up at the race just in time for it to start.  I would have been there FAR earlier, I need my warm up and mental preparation time.  Off she went and I headed over to the finish line to watch everyone come in.  The 5k winner came through at 15:09 all alone.  WOW!  It was crazy hot and humid and this guy runs a 15:09???  WOW!!  The 10k winners came through around 32 minutes, again pretty far apart, not much of a race to the finish line, but an amazing performance.  Then at about 1:05 it was the half marathon winners.  What a race that was!  The front two came in side-by-side (pictured).  They were gutting it out and fighting right up to the finish line! Absolutely mind blowing to know that in this sport us average working stiffs line up in the same event as these world-class athletes.

At about the 1:15 mark I decided to go to the other side of the finish line to get a picture of Kristy when she came through.  They originally had everyone running down the right side but moved them to the left side and my phone doesn’t have a zoom.  As I was on my way over I ran into a Facebook friend that had run the 5k so I stopped for a minute to talk to her.  After a few minutes I headed over to the other side figuring I had plenty of time.  To my surprise, right as I am passing by the finish line I look up and see Kristy crossing the line right next to me!  Did I completely lose track of time?  No way she’s coming through already.  So I turn around and head over to where they come out of the finish area and sure enough it was her, she had crushed her goal time!!  As I said, her goal was 1:45 or less, she finished in 1:24:57!  Awesome!  For a woman that HATES heat, humidity and hills, she does that?  Wow!  I was and am so impressed and proud of her!

As we were walking around after and she was cooling down we ran into a few members of our running club and got their stories.  One set a PR and the others were very close to their goals as well, so great performances all around.  Awesome!  Again, I wish I had been able to run, but what a great event and how awesome to see my wife and several friends do so well!  It is truly great to be a part of the running community, even on days I don’t get to race!

After a little resting at home, I headed to the gym for my second treadmill recovery run.  My run yesterday went really well so I was confident things would go great again.  As I stated yesterday, I started with a 12:00 mile yesterday and plan to increase it a little with each run.  Today I ran at an 11:32 pace for 3 miles again.  It went great yet again.  No pain, no discomfort, no worries!  I must say, so far recovery is going quite well.  After a little more rest we are going to head over to Gary Gribble’s Running Sports to use the gift cards we won from See KC Run.  Oh, and by the way, earlier this week I won a gift card for Road ID as well, so that is ordered and should be here before I am allowed to get back to running outside.