Cherry Blossom 10-miler

How dumb am I? Apparently, very.

On Thursday, my younger sister Suzanne came home so on Friday, she, my parents, and I could all head up to Cape May Court House, NJ to see my awesome cousin Jim get married. Suzanne brought home a cold with her. By Saturday, I had it too. The whole trip home my throat was sore and raspy, and by the time I went to bed my nose had decided to start running as well. (Ah, the joys of waking up utterly disoriented that NyQuil brings.) So this morning, what did I do? Sleep in, despite "losing" an hour of sleep because of Daylight Savings Time? Hell no, I went and ran in a 10-mile race. In 40 degree weather, with overcast skies and at one point a light sprinking of rain for about a mile and a half.

I am an idiot. What can I say? I will be shocked if I’m not even sicker by tomorrow morning. I swear, it’s like there’s a big vat marked "biohazard" and I’m sticking hands full of paper cuts right into it.

But on the bright side, I did pretty good. Pam kicked my ass—she zoomed off around the halfway point and was just an adorable pink dot on the horizon from that point on. (It’s the Cherry Blossom 10-miler, so she wore pink. She’s crafty like that.) Julie, Scott, and I stuck together for the whole course, and while our second half was a little slower than our first (we were zooming), we had a very respectable finishing time based on our past performances. Only worrisome thing was about 100 feet from the finish line, my left calf had a very strange twinge. It wasn’t a pain or anything, it just sort of… twinged. Twice. I sort of banked to one side when it happened and gave out a startled little, "Ahh!" which made it sound much worse than it really was. I really need to get back into the habit of stretched out my achilles tendons every day, I think.

(Ironically, if this had been a 5K or a 10K I’d have gotten new personal best times. But of course, it wasn’t. Ah well, I’m still quite pleased.)