I knew it was probably going to be raining for this race. The forecast had been predicting it for several days, so it was just going to be a matter of how hard it was raining and what the temp would be. Turned out to not be too bad. The temp was around 70* so even with the rain I didn't get chilled (except for the 10 min I stood around before the race started). Since there was no lightning, the race started off on time. It rained the whole time, but wasn't a heavy rain, just a steady one. Once I got used to it, I didn't even really notice it that much. I've definitely run through worse (Lewis & Clark half last Sept) so this wasn't really a new experience.

I've been having some issues with my right leg and my back so I didn't know if I was going to finish the whole 10k. Since it was 2 loops of the 5k and because of the way the course was laid out, I had 3 opportunities to stop if I felt like I needed to. As it turned out, my back didn't bother me at all and the leg only gave me a couple of twinges. I decided to stick with a run/walk since I hadn't run more than 3 miles at a time for at least 4 weeks and 2 of those weeks were only 3-4 miles total. It worked well. I made it through the first loop in a little over 37 minutes and started on the second loop. There were only a couple of people behind me doing the 10k - a lot more people were doing the 5k than the 10k - but I was feeling good and wanted to do the whole thing, even if I came in last.

As I started on the second loop, I picked out 2 guys who were about 1/2 mile ahead of me and decided to see if I could catch them before the end. I finally caught up to the one in the red shirt about 20 yards before the finish line. As I caught up to him, I told him it had taken me 3 miles to catch him. He let me go ahead of him across the finish line and came in right behind me. I was surprised to see the time. I figured that with the rain and everything else, it wouldn't be a good race for me time-wise. As it turned out, I came within 1 minute of setting a new PR and ended up with a good run.

Waited a little while to get my official time, had a water and an apple. Then home to get dry and warm.


Injury issues and not being able to run much the last couple of weeks.