Ho-Ho-Owwwww!!!!!

Today officially kicked off my training for 2011! Phew...

I'm following Lynda's "kick-asses-next-season-plan", which is designed to make you very, very fast. I'll let you know how it's going :-)

Luckily my legs are finally starting to feel normal again, as I have some hard intervals coming up over the next couple of days. This past weekend I did a 10K and afterwards I thought my legs were going to snap in two. Just for the record, it's probably a good idea to run a little the days/weeks leading up to a running race.

Here's the deal with running. I don't especially like it. But I DO like running in races with my friends, especially if they are around holidays! Which is why I ended up racing a 10K santa shuffle with my BFF Juli.

PS. The race promoters handed out these hats to everyone participating. For some reason I feel like I have to declare that I DID NOT actually show up to a santa shuffle race wearing a santa hat :-)

PPS. I think I was the only person (dork) who actually raced with the santa hat on. The only other people I saw wearing them were the old lady walkers bringing up the rear. And do you want to know how hard it is to run in an oversized hat with the pom-pom bouncing up and down? It took a huge effort to keep the thing on my head. If it would have been warmer then 25 degrees I would have tossed the thing. Oh well. I survived.

Anyways, back to the run. The most mileage I had ever run before the race was 4 miles, and I have to admit being a little nervous about doing a 10K. I started to build up the extra 2 miles in my head so much that you would think I was running 100 miles instead of 6.2.

Here I am before the race intimidating the other runners with my warm-up poses...

Juli and I lined up right behind the National Guard and high school track team and before I knew it we were off! It was one of those surreal moments where I was like, "where is my bike?" and even more importantly, "why am I running on pavement in a group???" The first 2 minutes were completely brutal and oxygen deprived but after that I kind of settled into some sort of pace.

At least I think I did. I didn't have a watch and there were no mile markers so who knows what my pace was.

During the race I was actually experimenting with my stride, and it was evident I had no clue what I was doing. My arms felt completely awkward flopping around and I almost wanted to pretend that I was holding on to a handlebar.

The first 3 miles flew by and after that it was all downhill. Figuratively, not literally. My hip started to tighten up and I never wanted to see the finish line so badly in my life. And the hardest thing about running races is that everything seems to take so much longer!!!

Finally Juli and I made it to the finish line. We ended up finishing a little under 45 minutes, which was good enough for both of us to get "wings" for winning our age divisions! BTW...I didn't just win my age division. I completely DOMINATED it. Which was easy to do since I was the only one in it :-)

So, now that I did a Halloween race and a Santa race I feel like I have to find a New Year's Day race!!! However, it would have to be a 5k. I may love endurance racing on a bike, but I think 3.1 miles is my limit for running....

Tomorrow it's back to intervals for me. Time to break out the balaclava-or not. Maybe I'll wear my santa hat instead-ha!