A return to "racing"

It's been about 18 months since my last road race, but I finally ran another 5K last weekend. After the plantar fasciitis, and a slow return to running, and then a recurrence and another slow return to running, it felt really good to run with the crowd again. I have lost all of the relative speed that I had built up in my first few years of running, and finished around where I expected, 129th of 134. But my time was actually better than I expected, so I'm happy.

It was a brisk, cold, windy morning (upper 30's), typical for this time of year. I ran this race two years ago, and really hated the finish, because the start line is at the top of a hill, and therefore the finish is all uphill. I just died at the finish that time, gasping and panting and out of energy. This year was much better though - even though I haven't been running much in the past year and a half, I'm smarter about doing some training on hills, and much better at pacing myself, and just kept trucking up the hill and across the finish line.

In spite of the cold, Mike came to watch, and I had a great time. There won't be many more 5K opportunities now until spring, but I'm already looking forward to increasing my speed and running fitness over the winter. It's good to be back.