I ran my first race yesterday, the
Cap10K. It's like an initiation into becoming an Austinite. Over 20K people participated this year!
I'll give you a little back story in that before January 2010,
I hadn't run a mile in 11 years.
It was then when my brother forced The Boy and me to sign up for the Cap10K. I obliged and
in my first training session, I ran 4 miles. I nearly died. I was trying to keep up with The Boy and The Bro. I was a bit behind, and I was so sore afterwards, I didn't want to run anymore.
February comes around and I am all out of practice, yet race day is just two months away, and I needed to get another run in. Another 4 miles. Tired, sore. Same as last time.
Bag orders start to flood in all of a sudden and I'm sewing sewing sewing. Before I know it, it's the day before the race and I only have 2 training sessions under my belt (but a lot of bags made and shipped!). I look at the elevation chart of the course, and start to feel a little less motivated....
Race day arrives.
I put on my "
I am a Ninja" tank from
Steppie and running shorts and hope that it'll fuel me through the race.
I run the first mile relatively easily, just trailing behind The Boy. My fashion fuel starts to fade. By mile 2, I've lost track of The Boy in the crowd, and now I'm all alone (not really, the course is very crowded). I'm completely gassed by mile 3, and I start cursing my brother for forcing me to participate in this race. It fuels me until I hit mile 4. By mile 4, the cursing ceases to fuel me and I start to feel the pain in my legs. I run by the water station and grab a cup, take a sip and pour the rest on my arms and down my chest (it's really hot).
I start telling myself, "C'mon Jenny, you can do this, you can do this!" and I make it to mile 5.
At this point, I stop passing people and people start passing me. In hoards. On both sides of me. I don't know how I managed to make it to mile 6, but once I did, I
sprinted the next .2 miles until the finish where I see The Boy at the finish line waiting for me.
My chip time was 1:03:55 (10:18 pace).
I was pretty mad at myself that I didn't train harder because I was aiming for an hour. But I can't expect to get great results without ample training.
But the surprising thing is how much I realized how mental running is. Halfway through, my physical capacity to continue running had depleted and it was up to me to convince my mind that I could do it and finish the race.
In the end, I'm very happy I did it and look forward to more running events in Austin.
My brother is paying for my registration for the
3M Half-Marathon next year, so I have to train for it.
Top left: Me, The Bro, The Boy after the race, taken with my iPhone
Banana Man: The Bro running in a banana suit, photo by Ricardo B. Brazziell from American-Statesman
Right side images by Ralph Barrera, Larry Kolvoord, and Jay Janner from American-Statesman
If you're curious, my brother's time was 53:44, The Boy's 53:16. We were all about 3 minutes over our goal times. Maybe next time!
