Anthem 5K Fitness Classic race report

Good lookin' statue behind that
chubby dude

About a mile into the race, I decided I wasn't going to do a race report. "What's the point?" I thought. I'm bonking this race. I'm about to start walking, and this is just a 5K. A 5,000 meter run on mostly flat asphalt, and I am dying. Who wants to read about that?

Well, obviously I got over it.

This was not my best race ever, but I had a good day regardless. I started out too fast. My first mile was almost an even nine minutes.  Even though I'm woefully under-trained, I had it in my head that I should shoot for a PR. I set my Garmin for 25'05" and started huffing. I should have run solid 10-minute miles, but I can be stupid sometimes. As I mentioned above, I had barely made it a mile when I decided that my strategy should have been to merely finish. Following a terrible second mile, I finished the race reasonably strong for a chubby guy.

Nearly 10K people ran today

What this race burned into my brain is that I am overweight (again) and being inconsistent (again) with my training. My weeks have looked like this 0 miles - 4 miles - 6 miles - 2 miles - 15 miles - 2 miles.  That's crazy. How am I going to run 10 miles in four weeks with that kind of commitment? I've gotta turn this mutha out.

Eating too many cows has been part
of my problem

Tomorrow, the diet starts up again. [Jeez, listen to me.] The training resumes in earnest. I'm going to get back in shape and rock the 10K in two weeks. Then I am going to finish, admirably, the 10 miler in four weeks. After that, I'm going to seriously burn up some miles ahead of the trail half marathon I have planned over the summer. Time to get serious. Again.

I should finish by saying that the race was remarkably well organized and executed. The staff and volunteers did a perfect job. Recent rains caused part of the original course to flood, but the organizers re-routed it. If you didn't know that, you could never had guessed they were scrambling at the 11th hour to put the race on. This is one of my favorite 5Ks here in town. You should try it.