10K

Way back in February when I first started hearing about Runfos and it was mentioned that one of our big goals for the next few months was to participate in the River Bank Run in May, I was a bit daunted. Doing a quarter mile at an 11:30 pace was a challenge. How I was supposed to do 3.1 miles was beyond me.

Then on St. Patty’s Day I did a 5K and concluded I had no choice but to do 10K at the River Bank Run. It certainly seemed reasonable that I could double my mileage in another 2 months, but then we started playing soccer outdoors, and frisbee outdoors, and I started biking again…and it wasn’t until last Saturday that I attempted to run 6 miles, and my running buddy (who had already done 10K+ earlier that day) bonked, so I didn’t quite manage that. Today was going to be a make or break day.

It started entirely too early. After eight months of waking up at 5:30am five days a week to work out, it’s become habit. It doesn’t matter where I am or how late I’ve been up the night before, I’ll wake up within 15 minutes of 5:30 and not really be able to fall asleep right away again. It’s reassuring if your alarm clock decides to take a day off, but not so much when it’s the weekend. I was up and ready to go, and arrived (despite a MASSIVE downpour on the drive to GR) around 7:15, with plenty of time to spare before the race.

My friend that I was planning to run with arrived a bit later and we scrambled to get going. We actually started about 10 minutes after the official start of the 10K, but that just meant we got to pass people constantly. She put in her earbuds and declared she wasn’t going to talk while she ran, so I set off at my own pace.

It was easily one of the most awesome experiences of my life thus far.

Mostly by virtue of the fact that I had started well after the last of the group had crossed the starting line, I passed people the entire way. I know it makes me sound like kind of an ass to brag that I passed people the whole way through, but I looked at it as not having yet hit my limit. As far as I could tell, I never slowed down and never reached a point where I had pushed myself too much. My limit is still out there, somewhere.

I ran the race without my earbuds (which I normally wear while running alone) and without my phone (which I use to tell me how far I’ve gotten and how much I’ve slowed down in the last 5 minutes) and it was kind of a weird experience. Despite running among a cohort of over 3,000 people, I felt oddly alone, but I also knew that we all shared the same goal.

The best parts of the race were towards the end. When we went back under the highway and had 5 lanes to spread out in I opened up and let it rip, and when we hit the brick roads I did the same. Once I saw the finish line I took advantage of my long legs and gave it everything I had and positively flew across the finish line. I never thought I would manage such a feat, but I did it and I felt like I had the entire city of Grand Rapids cheering me on along the way. There were cheerleaders, people standing along their porches, and people in ponchos downtown who had come out to cheer us on along the run, and it was like nothing else I have ever experience before. The only comparison I can draw is when I would march a parade during the Tulip Time festival and had people cheering and applauding for me, and it was the most awesome feeling ever.

Afterwards, there was beer (Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA, highly recommended) and drinks (New Holland Michigan Rum and Diet Coke) and burgers and sausages from the grill, my first ever game of beer pong (yes, I managed to get through Western without playing the game) and a fair amount of lying on the couch because I was a bit tired.

“I ran six miles today” became the excuse du jour when faced with something I didn’t want to do, and it was a good excuse. Now, though, I have to find something else to work for. I hear the Holland Hundred is in about 8 weeks…