the Way of the Turtle

A SEA OF GIRLS IN GOLD...
Slow & Steady 2016 - Race #49
Girls on the Run 5k Road Race
Saturday, November 19, 2016

This fall a couple of the staff at the girls' school set up a lower school chapter of Girls on the Run, an international program which seeks to " inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running. " I considered volunteering to be a running buddy but decided not to for several reasons - my lack of leg speed, the time commitment, and in particular the commitment to run a 5k race with one of the girls on mid-November. Then a few weeks back the school community at large was invited to come to the 5k to cheer on the girls who'd be running or run the race in support of them - and since I didn't have anything on the calendar, this would be literally minutes from home (the Corning Riverfront Preserve), and it would be an opportunity to help with a school program, I signed up for the run and did my best to encourage other faculty to sign up to either run or walk the 5k.

The pre-race ritual was an interesting one... after a bunch of talking (which I couldn't really hear) they led the crowd through a "warm up" which looked to me like a toned down Zumba routine. (I think I'll stick with my standard warmup of either going for a short walk, going for a short run (very rarely, and really only for very short races), or just waiting for the race to start.) And then finally the crowd mobbed the starting line and counted down to the start.

It took a few minutes for the crowd to spread out enough for me to run at a comfortable pace... which, surprisingly, was faster than a lot of the crowd (I finished 85th out of about 300 timed runners and walkers.) Then again, a lot of the "running buddies" might have been going significantly faster if they hadn't been running with a 3rd-5th grader who was running her first 5k, so I won't let it go to my head. In the end, I had a good day and ran faster than I'd intended (just under 11 minute miles... easily the fastest 5k I've done in quite some time.) All of our girls completed their first 5k and seemed pretty happy and excited at the end. And I was happy because (1) I ran sub-11 minute miles and my knees didn't explode - perhaps the warmup run I did before the race helped - and (2) this would seem to be evidence that I have gotten stronger through the longer distances I've been doing... while my times for those longer runs aren't necessarily dropping very much, I had energy to burn during today's much shorter race - and that's after the past three nights of running and riding after work.

And based on what I saw today, maybe I'll sign up to help out as a running buddy next time around, since it seems like there are girls in the program I'd be able to keep up with.

JMH

2016 Event Totals
Run 346.6 mi, 84 hr 7 min
Bike 119.2 mi, 9 hr 1 min
Snowshoe 6.2 mi, 1 hr 39 min
Kayak 1.5 mi, 20 min

states visited: CT, MA, ME, NH, NY, PA, RI, VT