YWCA 2-Minute 5k is tomorrow

Just a reminder for those people who desperately need to know information about my doings: tomorrow is the YWCA’s 2-Minute 5k event that I will happily be running in even though my body in the last week or so has begun fighting itself from within.

I haven’t been especially prudent in my running schemes as of late. While the weather has had its fits, it’s mostly been warm enough to run (although the wind is another story). On top of that, some sort of nasty bacteria seems to have made its new home my upper respiratory system and refuses to leave even though I have given it an eviction notice. The way I accomplished that was to punch myself in the chest repeatedly a few days ago after a fit of violent coughing at 2am. Hopefully the message was received. As of this writing, I have a slight cough, but otherwise no worse for wear.

What this means for the race tomorrow is that I will be overly sluggish and grouchy (normal) AND coughing (abnormal), but I know I will be fine otherwise. Two moons ago I put in an OK time for 3.12 miles of 31:42, or four minutes slower than my time in my last marathon. The catch here, though, is that, unlike before, I have been pacing myself more by adding a minute of rest per mile. If I had run straight through the time may have been a couple of minutes less. I haven’t done a straight 5k in a while, though, so it may very well have killed me had I attempted it.

Of additional note is that I am still going to run this with my bare feets. Having a slightly slower time as a result doesn’t bother me too much when I remind myself of that. And while I am missing that 3mm of padding that Vibrams provide, I feel like my pace is still ok. What I need to stop doing is worrying about the pace at all, and just have fun. On the other hand, I do enjoy beating people while running barefoot, so I don’t know if I can sate that part of me that likes to gloat if I am getting passed all the time. I’m too vain to let it happen.

We shall see tomorrow, though, how it all turns out. And if you are so inclined, the donations page is still available if you would like to help the YWCA.