Running Day 5

Whoa-ho, today was an intense day!

Let's start with... Lederhosenlauf!

Today was the Lederhosenlauf (Lederhosen Run) 5K in St. Paul. I know someone who plays the accordion for singers & polka-dancers at the halfway mark, and needed some folks to get all gussied up and sing and dance the polka. I figured those were things I could do on a Saturday morning, so I got out my scissors and turned an old dress into a dirndl.

Let me say that I have never danced the polka before, and my German is APPALLING but with some well-applied gung-ho spirit, we sang and danced and cheered the runners, and then headed off for our 9:30 AM beer and brats. Because, Germany.

It was intimidating to see all these people running along at the halfway mark, some looking very tired indeed. I thought, "Oh crap, this is going to be difficult, isn't it?". Then a friend of mine trotted up, clearly having run AT LEAST 5K already, looking fresh as a daisy and ready to lope along for a good long while.

I was pretty much consumed with envy, which is one of the best motivators there is.

No, I should amend that. It's not so much envy as it is a desire to be like that person, and to embody their totally awesome traits and abilities. Sometimes I look at another person who is levels ahead of me in some skill and am struck with this kind of love and hero-worship, and I just think they are so cool and capable and I want to be like them to the extent that I start thinking about eating them and crawling inside their flesh and wearing it like a scary mask and gaining all their powers.

"Envy" is perhaps a less-creepy way of expressing that emotion.



At any rate, I came home all fired up, and worked in the garden until 5 pm, when I set off running (Week 4, Day 1). It was a stupid combination of going the difficult way around the block (up a long hill) and leveling up 1 week, which has longer run periods. I got caught by zombies at minute 25, trying to turn my jog into a sprint on the middle of the hill. At the end of the session I went so far that I ran out of block, and had to sort of run up and down the street just to use up time.

After cooling down and having a toilet, I suddenly felt really amazing, and this is where the day became even more bonkers, because I decided to go out AGAIN. Basically, RIGHT AWAY. I went the easy way around, and did Wk1D2 in order to catch a break, but it was still pretty difficult. I felt funky around minute 40, and zombies caught me again, twice.

But I saved a bunch of people who were trying to escape a fire and a zombie attack, so that's OK!



So far I'm averaging about 7.5 minutes per kilometer, which I guess is OK. It's been steady so I guess I can only get faster? I did 3.9k in 31 minutes on my first lap of the block. Apparently an "average" pace for a 27 year old woman is 11:47 (WHAT) so that's... my goal? That first lap has a pace of 12:47, so hey, that's pretty good for being on track.



Heigh-ho away I go, faria faria ho!