Posted on February 18, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Race Report: 2010 President’s Day Freedom Run

This was originally posted on Tuesday, February 16, but apparently the issues with my hosting service resulted in some data being lost, so my post disappeared. To which I say, grr! Here is the original post, thanks to Google’s super awesome caching skills. Unfortunately the pictures will not upload at the moment but I will have them back up as soon as possible. Okay, should be good now. Sorry about that!

Sorry for the internet silence–the website was acting freaky all weekend (something about a fiber getting cut?). But now it’s time for the results from my second 5k–the 2010 President’s Day Freedom Run!

To be honest, I was disappointed with how I did in this race for a little while afterward. There were several things working against me, and it just didn’t come together the way I would’ve liked. If I’d written this post the evening of the race, there would’ve been a lot of negativity (well, a lot more negativity). Now that I’ve had time to think about it for a couple of days, though, I’m happy with how I did. I forget too quickly that I injured myself during my first 5K on January 1 and wasn’t able to jog for the majority of January–that I was able to do better in this race than the previous one after only a few jogs in the two weeks before the race is a good thing.

Enough whining, to the details.

I think the major thing that was working against me this race was my shoes. You see, I left my apartment on Friday afternoon thinking my running shoes were in my bag. About halfway into the hour-and-a-quarter drive to my parents’ house, I realized that the bulge in the top of my bag was not my shoes. I called my mom, who suggested I turn around, but I would’ve been turning back to my apartment into the beginning of Raleigh rush hour traffic, and then driving through the middle of it on the way back to the house again. I decided to continue home and go out to Wal-Mart later to find shoes to jog in. I managed to find a pair of Dr. Scholl’s running shoes that would do the job but are crazy heavy.

Another thing working against me was the weather. Mid-week the forecast started calling for snow on Saturday morning, and by Friday afternoon there was talk of up to 4 inches of snow and I’d been contacted by the race timing company about a possible delay or cancellation of the race. Later in the evening I got a voicemail from someone in the race letting me know that it was being delayed from 11AM to 1PM, but was still on. The snow started pouring while I was making my trip to Wal-Mart and I woke up in the morning to this:

Fortunately, it didn’t stick to the roads and by the time we got to the race site you could hardly tell it had snowed. But there was some wicked cold wind blowing that was making us all crazy cold. In the end the snow turned out to be a good thing, though–I got to stay up and watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics, the race started later in the day when it was warmer, and Heath got to go play outside in the snow.

(Yes, the dog is holding a half-deflated basketball in his mouth.)

My race day breakfast was two pieces of white bread toast with peanut butter and a banana on top, plus a whole bunch of grapes.

I also had most of a cherry cashew Pure bar in the car on the way to the race site. The race started at an LDS church in Sanford and was sponsored by the LDS Young Women and the Boy Scouts of America. Gotta say, the atmosphere was miles better than at my previous 5K–not that anything was wrong with that one, but this was much more intimate and welcoming. We were invited inside (warm!), where chairs were set up for us in the gym so that we could listen to a band play, and they had hot chocolate for everyone. Plus, the race goody bag actually had stuff in it!

We had to walk down the road to get to the start, then run back to the church, run around the parking lot, then head back out toward the start and jog down the road parallel to Highway U.S. 1. Seriously–U.S. 1 was right next to us, and there were cars turning from it into the open lane of traffic. We were jogging in the other lane.

I have no recollection of my dad taking this picture, and in fact had to be convinced that it was of me.

There were young women every quarter mile or so with signs, cheering us on. It was strangely encouraging. At mile one, there was a lady calling out splits, and when she called out 12:07 as I ran past, I knew I’d started too fast. The chill from the wind was killing me–it wasn’t so much that I was cold, it was that I was basically hyperventilating cold air (tainted with exhaust from the highway). My calves were sore from the new running shoes. And to be blunt and give you TMI, I had cramps and was feeling a little nauseous at that point–if this were just a normal run, I would’ve turned back and walked home. But I had to keep going, so I took a walk break for about two minutes after that first mile to try to catch my breath.

Things got better after that, except once the wind died down a little and I was in the sun, I got hot. But I couldn’t get my jacket off–damn double zippers! The bottom one got caught and I couldn’t undo it, so I settled for unzipping it most of the way and taking off my running gloves.

Go 301!

I knew I was almost dead last (really, almost DFL!) when I hit the water stop halfway through at the turnaround, started back, and saw the sweeper golfcart in the distance. I eventually just started repeating 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 over and over to myself, breathing out and hitting one foot on the ground when I said one number and breathing in and hitting the other foot on the ground when I said the other. I made it to the end that way. Another woman finished a little bit ahead of me, but the next person behind me was several minutes behind, so I ran through the finisher’s chute by myself and had the race photographer all to myself. Unfortunately, the bottom of my jacket had caught on my shirt(s) and pulled them up, so my big white tummy is hanging out in all the shots. Awesome.

I do rather like the photographer’s shot of me just after I started, before I was half-undressed and in pain.

My finishing time for my first 5K was 41:02. This time around, I crossed the finish at 40:42. Not much improvement, but I did walk a little bit this time, so my running speed did improve slightly. I finished 6/6 in my 20-24/F age group, and 70/73 overall. This means there were lots of people at the finish line cheering me on (including my parents)!

I’ve decided not to run any 5Ks for a little while so that I can focus on building up my endurance more–my weekly runs are still only 2.25 miles long, and I know having that endurance to be able to run 3 miles in one go on a consistent basis would improve my times. So I’ll be working on One Hour Runner for the next few weeks. I’m hoping to start again tomorrow–the last two and a half days my muscles have been crazy sore, but today was much better. I could even take the stairs at work!

To think, people pay for this privilege…