Memoirs of the Masochistic Couch Potato

Yesterday I ran in the Monument Avenue 10k race. This is my third 10k, unfortunately for me my last one was when I was still in high school. The picture above is from the paper today...yeah, you won't see me. There were over 24,000 people in this run, so they divided us up into "waves" based on the time that we thought we would take to finish it. This is wave "A", they started at 8:30; I was in wave "N" we started at 9:30. The weather was cold and rainy. While I was waiting to begin the run I noticed someone with a shirt that said, "This sounded like a good idea three months ago," Amen to that! I was nervous! It wasn't a competition for me, but I was still nervous, that's a long haul! I was determined to run all 6.2 miles too. In all my training for this 10k though I never ran in the rain...I should have though, because for most of the run(a good 5 miles) my shirt was getting wet by more than just my perspiration. Every time I tried to wipe the moisture from my face I remembered that my sleeve was wet with rain and therefore pointless. At the designated water spots I wished they offered towels to dry our faces with rather than cups of water.

To your left is the winner, the picture is not the same day, but it's the same guy as last year, his time here is better than yesterday, but only by about 15 seconds.

You know what this essentially means don't you? He's a wave "A", he started at 8:30 and finished it in under 30 minutes. He was done, before I even started. It's a little disheartening, the winner is always a Kenyan too.
Overall I only stopped twice to walk (speed walking at that) and that was after the turn around (3.1 miles) to drink some water without spilling (though I swallowed the wrong way the first time) and the other was right after the 5mile mark because my toes felt like they fell off and I just wanted to check on them, other than that I ran the whole time. I checked my time this morning, 1 hour 9 minutes and 1 second. I don't know why that 1 second bothers me, but it does.

I think considering the rain, the lost toes, and the perpetually wet face I did pretty well. Better than I thought I would and faster than I run it on the treadmill. We'll see if I can beat the Kenyan next year!