Mid-week Run on the American Tobacco Trail

George and I met after work to run on the American Tobacco Trail last evening. I'm not used to running in the heat of the late, late afternoon, but it was a nice change of pace! I usually exercise in the morning, and on Wednesday evenings we usually do water aerobics together at the gym. It was good to shake things up a little, and I really enjoyed having the running company! We did 2 miles, and then hit the Mellow Mushroom at the American Tobacco Campus for dinner. Yum!

I was happy to have negative splits for the 2 miles. The first mile did include our .25 mile warm-up walk. After that, we ran/walked at 30 second intervals.

Mile 1: 20:16
Mile 2: 18:55

Race Report: 2011 North Carolina Blueberry Festival 5K

Last Saturday, June 18, I participated in the North Carolina Blueberry Festival 5K. My goal was to break 60 minutes, but I was a little nervous about it. Anything can happen on race day, even in a 5K! This was my second trip to  Burgaw, so I knew that the course would be pretty flat.

I rode down with fellow Raleigh Galloway runner Marjorie and her boyfriend, Rudy, and we left from Raleigh about 5:00 AM. (I think this is the farthest I've driven to a race and not spent the night!) We ended up with plenty of time before the 7:30 AM start to warm up and use the porta-johns (some of the nicest I've ever been in, seriously!).

The race started on time, and I had my interval timer set to run/walk at 30 second intervals. That worked pretty well, as I was able to maintain that throughout the race.The course was flat, over several neighborhood streets. There wasn't much crowd support, but maybe the residents were already at the Blueberry Festival! There was a firetruck along the course that had water streaming from the hose, and I ran under it a couple of times, but was sorry later that I had done that. It was so humid that my wicking shirt never dried. I was glad I brought a change of clothes for walking around the festival!

I ended up with a chip time of 58:06, and a gun time of 58:39, and that's with having to stop and tie my shoe! I came in 475th out of 482 runners and walkers, and 30/30 in my age group. Official results are here. Slow as my finishing time was, I'm encouraged the progress over my last 5K.

NC Blueberry Festival

Marjorie, Rudy, and I enjoyed walking around the North Carolina Blueberry Festival afterward. Many vendors were in the courthouse square shown on the left. (If you click on the picture to make it a little bigger, you can make out the Pender County Courthouse in the background.) I bought two pints of blueberries--yum!! (Now I wish I'd bought more!)

Marjorie and Rudy

There was a classic car show going on in conjunction with the Blueberry Festival. Here are Marjorie and Rudy in front of one of my favorite cars there.

Love the License Plate!

The back of the same car, with a clever license plate!



The rest of my pictures from Burgaw and the 2011 NC Blueberry Festival are here.

Race Recovery

Today has been a busy recovery day from yesterday's North Carolina Blueberry Festival 5K! It was a pretty nice race, connected with the annual NC Blueberry Festival in Burgaw. Normally, I would've enjoyed a low-key post-race day, but George and I were busy today! I'm still waiting for official race results, so I'll wait until those come in before I write and post my race report. (Good thing 'cause I'm about to fall asleep in this chair as I type!) The good news is that I have a new 5K PR for 2011! (I'm taking progress where I can find it!) More soon!

Back to the Gym

I decided to go to the gym last night after work, to give my legs more of a rest from Monday morning's workout. After some cardio, I tried a weight machine for legs for the first time in ages, but felt some sharp pain in my left leg, so I tried some one-leg lunges instead. I didn't feel any sharp pain doing those, so I'll stick with those for a little while.



I did some upper body strength training after that, and followed with a good stretch/flexibility session on the floor. A hot bath with Epsom Salt felt great afterward!

Running Dreams

I had two dreams about running recently, one Saturday night and another Sunday night, both involving my running speed (or lack there of). In Saturday night's dream, I was running a marathon that was taking me all day (quite literally)! In Sunday night's dream, I was meeting up with the running group, which was so large that we had to meet inside a mall (don't know why!). In the dream, I was walking around and looking at all the runners before we got started, and I was thinking, "I'm not going to be able to keep up with any of these people!"

Gee, do you think I have issues about my speed? :-P So, what am I going to do about it?

When I woke up yesterday (Monday) morning, I shook a leg and headed to the gym for a solid workout before work. I need to remember not to overdo it this week, though, since I have a 5K this weekend.

Taking it Easy

Just realized I haven't posted here at all in June! Wow! Work has been super busy, trying to finish the end of the fiscal year. On the exercise front, I did join the Galloway group for last Saturday's training run. We had a guest leader who took our pace group out faster than usual, and try as I might, I couldn't keep up. My run/walk pace was my fastest of the season, but I wasn't able to hang with the pace or the distance last Saturday. I've been licking my inner wounds a little, but mostly letting my legs rest so far this week. The IT Band Syndrome seems to have come back, and the tendonitis in my ankle has been fussy lately too, the price I may be paying for trying to get faster too quickly. So, I've been skipping my morning workouts and getting to work a little earlier (not a bad thing for me in June!) this week. I do miss my exercise, though, on several fronts. George and I are planning to go to water aerobics tonight, which should be good.