Virginia 5k

Last year my Lovey and I signed up for a Thanksgiving Day race on a whim.  Waking up and racing on a holiday, in the cold, was a bit challenging, but we ended up loving the feeling of starting off a glutinous holiday with some endorphins.  Plus, when I met a plethora of his relatives later that day, many of whom are runners, are married to runners, or have track stars for kids, it gave me an automatic ice breaker to mention the race that we have run a few hours before and my shiny new 5K PR that stood for 10 months. 

This year we decided to do the same thing, except we were going to be in Virginia this year.  That counted as a state for me, so sign me up!  Same feeling of drudgery in the morning; tired, slow to wake, a bit late for the race, and sore legs from driving in the day before.  Unfortunately this time, that blah feeling didn't ever really exit stage right so I ran a pretty mediocre race.  Hills + cold = 25:26.  We ran a little more than a mile up a straight road, then made a right turn into a neighborhood where we winded around and curves and up and down hills.  Around 2.5 miles, we exited the neighborhood in a different spot than where we went in, and ran back down the same road where we started.  A cute little loop to be sure, with lots of crowd support.  It takes a special person to stand outside your house, in the cold, on a holiday, to cheer people on.  Go Virginians!

There wasn't much of an after party, although I did get handed a race beanie which I love.  Within a few minutes of the race being over, I became really chilly.  We didn't stay long after that, Lovey tried to find some friends but forgot his phone, so it wasn't worth standing around anymore.  I wasn't even that disappointed in my time.  Some days I just don't have the mental strength to run a balls to the wall, run but don't die feeling associated with 5k's. So I used it more of a hard training run and embraced the hills since I don't normally run on them.

Then we started the glutinous part of the day and all was right with the world:)