North Shore Cupid's Love Dash 2014

February 9, 2014

Third 10k - North shore Cupid's Love Dash

Highland Park, IL

Around 15 degrees!

Time: 1:09 average pace: 11:11

Place: female 61/84; age: 56th; overall 123/155

The weather this winter sucked ass! I had not been able to get outside to train for this race nor had I made enough time to get on the treadmill in my office building. I bought my condo in November and since then I have been wrapped up in painting and decorating. I also started working from home 2 days a week and the office closed a total of 4 days this winter due to bad weather. This left me with limited access to a treadmill. It's just been bad news all the way around. Bottom line, I was not prepared.

I signed up for this race last year as part of my one race per month 2013 goal but due to a horribly nasty cold I couldn't participate. My idea for this race was to make anti-valentines felt conversation hearts - like the candy but not.  I made them all right, I just never got to wear them. Only one of the hearts was obsolete. This was the one that read "hot at 39." I'm a year older now. 

ever since I moved to the city I am heaving severe mentally dumbassness with managing my time for race morning. I had to run out the door quickly, eat in my car and stick the hearts all over my body while driving at 70 MPH on the highway. I'm quite a skilled driver!

I got there with 5 minutes to spare to race time. I really should have tried to go to the bathroom but I didn't. So along the way around mile 1 I had to poop. Great, only 5 more miles to go! Bad news. The route was residential. I could hold it or bother some poor family trying to sleep. I almost went into a synagogue that I passed. It looked open as cars were going into the parking lot. Bekki was supposed to be waiting for me at the finish line. I was planning on plowing her over to get to the port-o-pottie!

I had a really hard time with this race. I decided to do a run/walk of 5/1. As always my Runkeeper app was not to be relied on. I ended up running the first mile. I felt OK but told myself not to push it so I stopped when I wanted to go on running. Then somewhere around mile 4 the workout ended. I didn't set the intervals to infinite. I had them set to a certain number. So great, how was I going to know when to stop and start running without holding my phone in my hand? Well, I blew it. I couldn't run for more than a few minutes at a time. There were too many hills and then some ladies clearly older than me tried to offer support by asking me to run with them because, "were going slow." 

I lost half of my hearts (but not before I got tons of compliments!), I had to poop the whole time, I couldn't even keep up a simple run/walk, and my lips were frozen and the cold was hurting my lungs.  It's so easy to fall into the negatives of racing and running but ya know what? I also have this to say: I finished a 6.1 mile course from start to finish, my friend was waiting for me to go to breakfast, the route was absolutely gorgeous, the sun was shining, I got a new long sleeved technical shirt, I got free candy!, and I was one more race into completing my 2014 goal of one race per month. So there!