Erin Go Run

What were you all doing on thanksgiving morning? Probably hung over or dreaming of the big dinner you were going to have later that day. Not me. I was thinking about my first race I was about to run since being back from Europe. It was just over three weeks since my marathon, and only 3 days since my first run. Here I was lining up at the start line of yet another race. My biggest fear was how my legs would hold up. I knew that my lungs would have been fine, but my legs. They were going to torture me, I knew it. So here is a recap of the race:

Mile 1

Ha! Just kidding. This was only a 5K, a 20 minute run. It went by too quickly for me to think about documenting it over three days worth of blogs. Plus, the whole time I was thinking about how my legs really didn’t hurt that bad. I managed to hold up a pretty good pace throughout the race. My legs weren’t torturing me at all, my confidence was. Here is the lesson for the day: running is about 90% mental. Because I was so afraid of my legs holding me back from a good race, I let myself talk them into not going any faster than I was comfortable doing. And being my first race back, I didn’t feel comfortable going very fast at all.

I finished in an average time, for me, 21:53. I placed in the top 50 for women, and in the top 200 of total runners. Not bad for the first race back, but secretly (not anymore) I had hoped to surprise myself.