Just Another Runner

I achieved my 2nd short term goal - to run a 5K race! The 1st was to run continuously for 30 minutes and I did that last Dec. 2009. It took a while to achieve this one because of my injury which prevented me from training in January and early Feb. But all that matters now is that I was able to do this. I'm not really sure about the time but it's probably between 45 to 50 minutes. My initial plan was to just run it as easy as one of my training runs but maybe because of the energy of the race and the crowd, I ran it a lot harder. I was spent at the end of the race. My heart monitor read only 17 seconds in Zone 1! Only 2 minutes in Zone 2! 5 minutes in Zone 3 and a whopping 38 minutes in Zone 4. Definitely a recipe for injuries and/or over-fatigue. I guess I'll just do races at most once a month or else I'll risk injury or over-fatigue. Aside from finishing, what's great is that I didn't re-injure my plantar fascia and even if I was really spent at the finish, I w

While running this morning at the UP academic oval, there was this guy running in the opposite direction as me, and he was smiling. He wasn't smiling at anyone in particular nor was he with anybody. He was alone, running with a smile on his face. I see a lot of runners smiling, but normally it is because they are with a running partner chatting away. This guy was running alone, like I was. The first time, I thought it was kind of weird. The second round, I thought, he looked happy, content and relaxed (and probably didn't care if other people thought he was weird), while I thought I was tight, in pain and huffing and puffing a little. So I gave it a try. Well, unlike his obvious grin, I can only make myself do a demure-like, no-teeth-showing, not so obvious smile, but I felt like I was smiling nevertheless. I actually felt better, like everything is ok with the world. Why? I don't know, but I should do this more often. I couldn't continue smiling without any reason so I

After attempting a few times to run with my injury and it not doing me any good, I've decided to stop running and let it heal first. I haven't run for the past 3 weeks. It is a lot better now but there is still some pain. I think I'll wait another week.