And So a New Running Season Begins....

I had my first race of the 2006 season this past Sunday, the Newark Distance Classic. You have your choice of a 5K (3.1 miles) or a 20K (12.4 miles) and being the masochist that I am, guess which one I chose? :-)

All in all, I am very happy with my time. I did 1:50:37, about 12 minutes off last year's time. I was shooting for a true 9-minute mile pace which would have put me around 1:52, so I actually did better than anticipated, with a 8:54 pace. I chalk it up to the 10-lb. weight loss plus good coaching last year from Coach Joel.

This is not an easy course to begin with (lots of hills and grades), plus the nasty headwinds we had in our faces for about 75% of the race didn't help.

But I felt pretty good afterwards, albeit a little soreness which is normal. Unfortunately, I did get one of those mysterious low-grade headaches which I've been told can come from not warming up properly (guilty!) or not taking in enough fluids before the race (probably guilty as well). Excedrin with caffeine seems to do the trick.

I beat my poor honey which was a first but it's not really fair since he's injured. He's been told he has a bone spur in his right heel which is very painful. He probably should not have run the 20K but he wanted to do it. I yelled at him that he's got to go see a foot doc and get x-rays done. He promised me he would. The sooner you find out what's wrong, the sooner you can begin treatment. I really don't know anything about bone spurs except that they are common in overweight people. Tom, however, is anything but, so it's got to be due to overuse.

So, my next race is at the end of this month, a 10K in Millburn, a walk in the park after this one.

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In other news, my cousin continues to send me lame emails. About 1 in 10 has a funny joke, but most of them are the kind where you're asked to "send this email to 100 people in 5 minutes or a terrible fate will befall you and your loved ones" or annoying proverbs about men versus women and so forth. I'd rather read emails from crooked Nigerians. Most of the time, I just delete her stuff without opening it.

But yesterday was the last straw. She sent me something about a guy who creates babies out of marzipan. That is just too creepy for me. My brain will never be the same after seeing this: