August 23 - Huxley Prairie Fest (5K Race)

Total time: 44:45 minutes
Total distance: 3.10 miles

5K in the lightning! In the lightning! In the raaaaain!* (For that to make sense and/or be funny, you need to be marginally familiar with this awesomely juvenile/NSFW video from my early years of college.) #strife 

In all seriousness, though, the rain didn't really bother me and it was much preferred to the super hot day we were supposed to get. What did bother me was that the race started about fifteen/twenty minutes late, that there was no real "start" line (even though it was supposed to be chip-timed?) and that the route went through residential neighborhoods where people were driving around and where any of us could have feasibly gotten hit by a car. I was not terribly keen on that bit. Closed roads = safer. 

Anyway. Knocked almost 3 minutes off my last 5K but wasn't quite fast enough to beat my 2014 PR of 44:29. Ah, well. Next time? 

Also, ended finishing fourth from last. Meh.

*The lightning had pretty much stopped by the time the race was supposed to start, but that ruins my joke, so...

August 17

Total time: 14:31
Total distance: 1.01 miles

I had to do a double take on this one when entering the numbers - it was nearly identical to July 29's run. Upon closer inspection, they are only three tenths of a second different than each other.

I'm having troubles getting my Garmin to sync right now which is kind of annoying, and I didn't take a post-run photo, so... uh. This is a pretty weak entry, but it wasn't really that remarkable of a run, either, so. I guess they can't all be noteworthy.

August 6

Total time: 1 hr, 42 minutes
Total distance: 6 miles

So, at some point, I figured I should at least get an idea of what six miles looks like. So I did this through what I like to call EXTREME INTERVALS. By which I mean, I didn't do intervals by time - I did them by distance. I ran 2 miles, walked 0.5 mile, ran 1.5 miles, walked 1 mile, ran 1 mile. EXTREME INTERVALS. 

It was pretty intense. There were several points where I didn't think I was going to be able to do it, but the other part of my brain was like, "but you have to. You're not going to get any better if you don't push yourself." So I did. And it was hard. But I feel so much more prepared for my 10K race next month than I had at any point up until now. I may even survive the thing. I probably won't be able to run all of it, and that's okay. 

August 2 - Iowa Irish Fest (5K Race)

Total time: 47:36 minutes
Total distance: 3.19 miles

Generally, running multiple miles in the Iowa August heat and humidity is a terrible idea, but the weather the morning of this race was actually rather comfortable. I'd wanted to do the 5K attached to the Iowa Irish Fest last year but I can't remember what it conflicted with... at any rate, it didn't work out. I signed up really late, so I didn't get a t-shirt, which made me a little sad. I mean, I need another t-shirt like I need another hole in my head, but they were kind of cool and it's not like my registration was any cheaper for not getting one. Ya know?

In addition to it being simply a cool event, some recent digging on Ancestry.com has dug up the fact that one of my great-great-great grandfathers on my mother's side came on over from Ireland. I still have some work to do, so I can't give a full percentage of Irishness in my veins, but it's a pretty recent immigration, so I'm going to go ahead and say that my attendance at such an event is justified. (As well as attendance at any given Oktoberfest. Or Swedish or English events, apparently. We're very Western European.)

This is all very beside the point, which is that I finally - IN AUGUST - ran my first 5K for the year. As in, ran the whole thing.

My time was, interestingly, slower than the 5Ks that I intervaled this year, but no matter. That wasn't really the point. The point was to run the whole thing, which I did.

Plus then I got to hang out with my sister and nephew at the 'fest for the rest of the afternoon, and that was pretty fun. It's always nice to have someone waiting for you at the finish line, too, for a change.