Rest day

Well, I had planned on a 70 mile bicycle ride with Gary but decided last night that I needed a rest day instead. My last rest day was Monday and I was just exhausted. I thought he might have rescheduled because of the forecast rain and very little visibility this morning at 6 a.m. It was foggy and part of our route was going to be on Hwy 36. I may be overly cautious but driving a truck and knowing how little you can see on a morning like this would have been enough to keep me home anyway. Pair it with a holiday weekend and the number of motorists that are sleepy, still buzzed, or hung over and that's not a risk I'm willing to take on a very busy road with no shoulders.

Yesterday was the Firecracker Fast 5k in Little Rock, it's advertised as all downhill but they lied! Most of it is downhill but there's a nice little uphill near the end of the race. I hadn't planned on racing racing it but once I got going I couldn't help myself. All that adrenaline, excitement of others, and just sheer happiness of being on the course just took over. This was my first year running this one and I definitely want to do it again next year. The only downside is that it's not an out and back course so you have to make your way back up those hills you just ran down unless you catch a ride with someone back or have somebody with you that's not running it park at the finish line.

This ended up being my 3rd fastest 5k at 25:50 (5k pr is 23:56) so I'm very happy with my performance. I think that comes out to an 8:20 pace, my first mile was 8:40 so had negative splits. Don't know what my other miles were exactly 'cause I didn't wear my garmin. Not too shabby considering I haven't done any speedwork since the first of May. I do wish it had been a chip-timed race. There's always a gap in the time between when you cross the finish line timer and when they take the tear-off from your bib. It was only 8 seconds but I still prefer chip timers.

The best part of the race--getting to meet more of the Cabot Cruisers. Annette introduced me around but I'm so terrible with names that I can't remember everybody (Sorry!). It will take me a couple of times (or 3 or 4.......) but I do think I retained at least half of it this time. It helps that I'd met a few already at the Tour de Rock. Absolutely great group of people!!

This is what I was hoping to find around the Searcy running community but haven't yet. I do have a great group of cyclists to ride with here but there are not any serious WOMEN road bike riders that I've found yet. Just cruiser, hybrid, and mountain bike riders that are either not wanting to put in the mileage that I am right now (not that I'm a high mileage rider) or aren't up to a faster pace (not that I'm very fast-yet, LOL). I don't want this to come off sounding like I'm snotty about my abilities--I have a long way to go to being a good cyclist but I'm kind of in an in-between stage right now as far as the other women riders I know in my town. The Cabot community has quite a few women that are much better (triathlons, Ironman!) and some like me that aren't in the recreational stage but not yet in the super hard-core cycling ability group and it's nice finding that.

I did get to see Daylean again at the 5k yesterday. We're usually fairly close in our race times but right now she's ahead of me as far as training and she finished in 24:19 (great time!). Annette offered me a ride back up to the starting point (her husband Arland has a running related injury so didn't get to race yesterday) but I decided to run back with Joan Scarlata and Rick and Richie Pinedo (slowly, thank goodness). I ended up with just over 7 miles on the day (1 mile warm-up, 3.1 miles race, 3.1 miles back). Joan is an amazing woman and made the time fly by on the return run.

Since I wussed out on Gary this morning I thought I would get to do the 12 mile fun ride but 15 minutes before the meeting time the skies opened up and it started pouring so I ended up going back to bed for a couple of hours. Must have needed the sleep because I was out almost as soon as I laid down.