I did it! Last Saturday I joined 32,000+ other runners, joggers, walkers, costumed superheroes, Indiana Joneses, a man dressed as a giant cockroach, Ms. Pac Man, guys dressed in drag and other weirdoes in the Monument Avenue 10k in Richmond.
I'd be lying it I said it was a piece of cake. It was tough. But I did it. And it felt good to cross the finish line.
I am a little upset at my time, however. I wanted to finish under an hour.
I blame my phone.
My handy dandy Sony Ericsson Walkman cell phone is equipped with a neat little fitness application that I’d been using for my training. It tracked my running distance, calories burnt, time, mph, etc. Really cool, right? Well…not really. Turns out I didn’t calibrate it correctly. It was off by about 0.3/mile. I discovered this at around mile 1 of the 10k, when I looked at my phone and it read “1.3 miles.” I quickly did the math and realized that I’d be running about 2 miles more than I had trained. This put a damper in my run. I think I walked more than I ran those last 2 miles…
After I came to terms with the fact that finishing under an hour was out of the question. I changed my goal. I spotted the cockroach guy about 100 yards ahead of me and was determined to get a better time than him. Turns out, however, cockroaches are pretty fast, what with having six legs and all…
I did end up passing the Ms. Pac Man guy and a guy wearing a diaper, though…so I had THAT going for me.
I'd be lying it I said it was a piece of cake. It was tough. But I did it. And it felt good to cross the finish line.
I am a little upset at my time, however. I wanted to finish under an hour.
I blame my phone.
My handy dandy Sony Ericsson Walkman cell phone is equipped with a neat little fitness application that I’d been using for my training. It tracked my running distance, calories burnt, time, mph, etc. Really cool, right? Well…not really. Turns out I didn’t calibrate it correctly. It was off by about 0.3/mile. I discovered this at around mile 1 of the 10k, when I looked at my phone and it read “1.3 miles.” I quickly did the math and realized that I’d be running about 2 miles more than I had trained. This put a damper in my run. I think I walked more than I ran those last 2 miles…
After I came to terms with the fact that finishing under an hour was out of the question. I changed my goal. I spotted the cockroach guy about 100 yards ahead of me and was determined to get a better time than him. Turns out, however, cockroaches are pretty fast, what with having six legs and all…
I did end up passing the Ms. Pac Man guy and a guy wearing a diaper, though…so I had THAT going for me.
3 comments:
That's awesome. I think you did great. Your problem is that you're too good at math. It would have taken me until mile 5 to calculate my error. Being horrible at math makes the time go by a little faster.
And you beat a guy in diapers. Not everybody can say that : ) Good job.
Last year I paced myself with a HUGE guy dressed as a grape. Sadly, he almost bested me.
This year I kept a man dressed in a french maid's outfits in my sites - worked much better!
I'm sure there's a moral somewhere in that, just not sure what.
Congrats on finishing. Was it your first 10K?
And you didn't post the super cute picture I took of you with your 'fans' :( That's ok they still had fun cheering for daddy.
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