I haven't written a race report since 2012!!! I have only participated in one race since that time. Back in 2014 I did a Glow Run 5k with the kids. It was horrible. I mean, it was fun in that it was at night and we all had things that glowed on us (glow sticks, glow shoelaces, glow rings, etc). But, the race part of it sucked. I was pretty close to my highest weight ever. I was in a very negative place and was still having issues with my Crohn's. I attempted to run some of it, but just really couldn't. We walked the majority of the 3 miles and I think it took us almost a full hour to complete the 3.1 miles.
I have tried many times to get back into running since getting admitted to the hospital in January 2013. I would get started and then would get too sick to continue. I mean, in 2013 I registered to do the Columbus Half Marathon. By the time the race came along I had to drop out because I was too sick to train. That was the last race I even registered for........until now!
I started Entyvio in April 2015. By September 2015 I was pretty certain that Entyvio was "my drug" and I had felt better than I had felt in 3 years. I gradually started back to exercising and run intervals as I was starting to feel better. By June 2016 I was back to pretty regularly running after convincing my mom to start intervals with me. We did that pretty consistently until maybe October, but I continued with the running on my own. Around November was when Leslie and I started running together and started talking about training for future races.
Back in 2012 I completed the Towpath 10-10 and the Towpath 10k. For whatever reason I didn't do any distance in the April Towpath race, but if I had I would have completed the Towpath Trilogy. When I was making my goal list for 2013, completing the Towpath Trilogy was on that list. We all know how 2013 turned out for me. It is now 2017 and I still have not YET completed the Towpath Trilogy. I quickly decided this year would be my year to try. The April Towpath event is the Half Marathon, but it has 3 mile and 5 mile distance races as well. I decided to sign up for the 5 mile event since it is a distance I have never "raced" before so it would be an instant PR regardless of how slow. I also had it in my mind that it would be easy to PR again later because I would likely be quite slow since I'm still early in the year.
It didn't matter that I didn't have anyone signing up with me. I was determined to complete this race and have a good start to completing the trilogy this year. I was talking to my mom about it earlier in the week and she ended up signing up to do the 5 miler with me! She had never run 5 miles before, but since she has lost a ton of weight and does her elliptical for over an hour every day I figured she could handle it no problem. I told her that I am SLOW and if she just stays with me I'm sure she'll be fine. But, I never asked her to do it. She wanted to do it so that I wouldn't have to do it alone. My mom is awesome. Did I mention that she just turned 70 in March!?!? No? Well, yea, she did!
Anyway, so we met there and froze our butts off while waiting for the race to start. It was such a beautiful day though. Chilly to start, but then perfect running temp for the rest of the race. The sun was shining and I can't even express how happy I was to be back out there at a race! It honestly did not feel like 5 years since I had done that.
When I signed up for the race I decided to put my estimated finishing time at 1 hour and 9 minutes because I hadn't done 5 miles faster than that in all of my training runs. And, I felt like I have been going slower lately (which you know was really making me mad). It ended up being such a great day and even though my legs felt like lead when we started; we finished our first mile in something like 12:14! I knew I wouldn't be negative splitting this race because I didn't think I could go much faster than 12:14, but I didn't care. I felt good pretty much the entire time. We kept our 2/1 intervals (run 2 minutes/walk 1 minute). There were people we kept leap frogging until we eventually just passed them for good around mile 4.
Official results......1:03.42!
That's a 12:44 minute/mile average pace! I am BEYOND happy with that! Considering my absolute best race pace was 11:03 m/m for a 4 mile race (back in 2011 when I was at my PEAK) and my best half marathon pace was 12:20 m/m (again, back in 2011 at my peak); I am beyond happy with 12:44 m/m in my first 5 mile race back! When I completed that half marathon and 4 mile race in November 2011, I also weighed probably 15 lbs less than I do right now.
Needless to say; I am EXCITED and I am BACK! Next up.... Cleveland Half Marathon!
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