Holiday weekend recap

Whelp its Monday already.  Let’s start with Thanksgiving.  First, the road race. 

Can I just tell you how insane it is to run in a race with that many people!?! I mean, literally, thousands of people, everywhere, some in costume, some in almost no clothes even though it was in the 30s outside. 

They have you line up by time, and there’s a sign at the side of the road for every 5 minute interval (20 minutes or less, 20-25 minutes, 25-30 minutes, 30-35 min, 35-40 min, and 40 min or more).  I positioned myself at the point where I felt the “50 minutes or more” sign would have been (had there been one) because I wasn’t about to fight these serious runners to keep up (we were packed in, elbow to elbow, no room for slow runners here!).  This is the view BEHIND me!!

 

I lined up by about 9:15am, but the race didn’t start until 10, so there was a lot of waiting around to do. 

 

When the race did finally start, it took me just under 5 minutes just to reach the START line! Here's the view in front of me, the banner strung across the street is the official start line:

 

 And as soon as I hit that, I was off running.  I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t fun that first mile.  There were so many people darting and weaving in front of me, I thought I was going to trip and fall or get trampled to death.  I was so concentrated on not tripping when people darted in front of me, that the first ½ mile went pretty quick.  And then…we hit our first bottleneck. I was literally jogging in place, not moving forward at all! So many people, I’ve never done a race like this! The jogging in place thing happened a few times throughout the course, but at about ¾ of a mile in, the hill started.  This was a big motha effin’ hill people.  It kept going.  And it was steep, but gradual.  And every time you thought you were at the top, you turned the corner and there was more.  All uphill until about mile 2.5.  Thankfully there was a giant downhill right after that, but there was a few points where I didn’t think I would make it!  All in all it was a lot of fun.  I ran the whole thing without walking, and I didn’t care too much about my time considering the fact that I wasn’t moving forward a few times throughout the race and that I was too concerned with not breaking my ankle by tripping from all the a-holes cutting me off, that I just figured my time would be the least of my concerns. I finished in just under an hour, and considering all of the obstacles I faced, I was pretty proud of that time!

My offical race time was: 57:49

Pace: 12:11

Ovearll Ranking: 10598 

Ranking in Female division for my age group: 901/1215

 

Side note, the woman who won (for the woman’s division) this race was named Delilah something or other, and she was actually the inspiration behind the plain white T’s song “Hey there Delilah” (she’s from Chicago).  Random, but cool, right?

Anywho, back to the rest of the weekend.  Thanksgiving went as expected, I stuffed my face with everything in sight! Unfortunately for me, running 5 miles does not mean I can eat whatever I want, for however long I want….I basically went on a fat girl binge all weekend between leftovers Friday, greasy spoon breakfast and hot dogs and beer on Saturday night, and Little Debbie Christmas Tree cakes yesterday.  I was so awful this weekend, the scale almost made me cry this morning.  I can’t believe how much I’ve un-done in 4 days’ time.  I didn’t even exercise at all the rest of the weekend after that race.  This is the dangerous point in my journey.  I’ve done this so many times…get to a weight where I feel relatively comfortable, stuff my face like I’m not on a “diet” anymore, and start gaining it all back.  I can’t do that this time! I got up and did some interval running on the treadmill before work today.  I packed healthy food for today, and I’m having grilled chicken for dinner tonight.  I’m going to start up Turbofire again tonight too.  I will not let this setback derail me this time.  I will keep going, I have to!

How did your weekend go? What are your plans to get back on track?