Waiting for the race to start.

Today was the See Jane Run half marathon (no thanks) and 5K (yes, please!) in Alameda, California.

The weather has been abysmal lately — low 60s and rainy in the middle of our 80s and sunshine season. So when the alarm woke me at 6:30, I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear rain. What did surprise me was that the rainfall was so heavy that I momentarily thought that my husband was in the shower. Nope. That’s the sound of a downpour outside my bedroom window. I almost didn’t drag my butt out of bed, but I plowed ahead, hit Peet’s for iced tea and a scone to get me going, and headed for Alameda.

As I drove westbound on 580, the clouds were clinging to the crevasses in the hills like little wisps of smoke. As I continued up the grade, the black line of clouds seemed to lift like a curtain, revealing blue skies over the bay. This was a good sign.

Even so, I expected Alameda to be cool, wet and windy. Have you ever watched Mythbusters? The big abandoned runway that they use — the one that’s subject to all kinds of wind and weather — is on Alameda island. But as I stood at the starting line in my arm warmers and waterproof windbreaker, I realized that the air was oddly still. No chilly breezes to keep me cool.

The 5K path was lovely, running along the coast of the bay with clear views of San Francisco. I didn’t fully appreciate it, though, because my foot was hurting. Not debilitating pain, mind you, but stride-altering discomfort. After about a mile, I realized that my stride wasn’t what it should be. I’d been compensating for the discomfort by heel-striking, and I was starting to feel it in my ankles, knees and hips. By the halfway turnaround point, I had to resort to a runwalking approach to reset my stride. I’d run a bit, notice that I was heel-striking again, and then walk for 10-15 seconds to get my brain and body engaged again.

The lovely weather that almost kept me in bed.

I finished with my worst-ever 5K time: 33:55 or so (it’s hard to know the exact pace because there’s a lag between when I start my Runkeeper app and when I actually cross the starting line, so subtract about 30 seconds from that time). I was disappointed. Very disappointed.

But I had promised my Team in Training coach that I’d email him my per-mile time as a benchmark to use to measure my progress for the season. 10:30/mile. Wait, even though 33:55 sounds like a terrible 5K time, 10:30 doesn’t sound bad at all. In fact, it’s comparable to my 10:48 pace that thrilled me nearly one year ago.

So while today was an off day, it doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. Last October, if you’d told me that I’d even be running again, I would have been thrilled, yet here I am whining about being in a perfectly reasonable position for training. I can do this. I just have to quit complaining and focus on what I can accomplish today, and stop comparing it to what I’ve done in the past.

Tags: 5k, pace, race, running, see jane run, speed, team in training

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