St. Pat’s Race Report

St. Pat’s Race Report

So nothing published yet. Not making progress on hardly anything, but here’s the quick summary:

• Organized my home office desk…still have a table full of mail to go through.
• Ran a race (details below)
• Started working on taxes
• Started a new chapter of The Immortals
• Took the boy to a swimming lesson…but today he’s home sick.
• So far on my diet: gained one pound.
• Installed this “Windows Live” suite which includes a blog editor…giving it a try for this post…I’ll create a separate blog post about it if it works out well.
• Created an account on gather.com which is a social site with a lot of writers.

Race Report:
Yesterday I ran the “Henry Weinhard’s St. Patrick’s Day Dash”. I Woke up yesterday at 6:30 am, looked outside and saw snow falling. This is very rare this time of year, but it’s been that kind of winter. It took me a while to get out of the house, and of course as usual there was a huge backup getting off the highway to Seattle Center. I had my normal race-morning “issue” and I never made it to the parking lot. I had to pull off into a McDonalds which fortunately had no line at the men’s room (and about 20 women waiting for their restroom). I decided just to parking somewhere illegally since it was only a couple minutes to gun time.

I ran from the McDonalds all the way to the start line, may half a mile. I had to run through throngs of people milling about all over the place, while snow cascaded down from the sky. I literally got into the gate about one minute before gun time. Last year I arrived to this race so late that I missed the first and the second wave and pushed my way through the start of the third. I was really glad to make the start this year.

I haven’t trained very well since last summer when my ankle gave out. I’ve been trying to nurse my tendonitis, and I’ve barely got my weekly mileage up to 20, where it should be 25-30. This year they changed the course. Instead of running over the Alaska Way Viaduct from Seattle Center to Qwest Field, we ran up and back along Hwy 99 along the side of Queen Anne Hill. Not much scenery, especially with the driving snow, which didn’t stick but got me all cold and wet.

I thought that the course was supposed to be 5K (3.1 miles). My first mile went fine, mostly downhill. The second mile ran up along the hill, gaining 112 feet or so. About half way up the hill, the fatigue began setting in. I haven’t done much speed work so my body isn’t used to this level of effort. My the time I turned around, I was pretty dead, and it was only half way. By the time came close to the finish, I had nothing left.

Here are the totals:
3.88 miles
time: 40:00 (although I swear my watch said 38 something)
Pace: 10:18. Not bad, although that translates into a 32:00 5K which is pretty poor for me. Last year’s race I ran at at 10:10 pace, although it had a net downhill of 80 feet compared to this year’s no net change.

Diet Tip of the Day:

The most tried-and-true method of losing weight is to cut calories. Unfortunately this has the side effect of making you hungry. You can fight this by eating a diet low in empty calories such as sodas and increasing protein and “healthy” fats.

Tomorrow’s post: A writing discussion (I promise)