I didn't challenge Bigfoot...

If today was anything like the past 3 years, I would have been running a race this morning. Every Memorial Day there's the Bigfoot 5K/8K down in Dansville (about 30 minutes southeast of here)....it's a very small race, but the shirts are still cool - "I challenged Bigfoot in Dansville, MI". Anyway I ran the 5K each of the past 3 years and I actually won it last year with a not-so-impressive winning time of 18:29. If I had done it this year, I would have done the 8K as a new challenge, and because I want to run more long races. They have the results posted already from the race this morning, and a total of 77 combined people ran the 5K and 8K, so that tells you how small it is. The winning times were 19:41 in the 5K and 31:58 in the 8K. Those really aren't impressive winning times either, but a lot of it could be explained by the heat!

The heat....wow. I knew in advance that it's supposed to be 90 degrees today, but when I woke up it was already 78 degrees and rose to 82 by the time I got my shoes laced and got out there. Even though it felt hotter than heck with virtually no wind and no clouds in the sky, I spent a lot of the run in shade so that made things better. Plus my calf felt pretty good :) It was also a very peaceful run...not to be redundant from my last post, but there was absolutely nobody on campus today due to the holiday. It's just so nice to run along the river on a day like this.

I ended up going 5 miles for my "pseudo" long run for the week. When I got done, everything felt fine except my feet were yelling at me, but I think that's because I chose to wear cotton socks in this hot weather...oops! I also decided that I'm gonna run the Cooley 5K this Friday night, but I'm not gonna force it. I know the competitive kid inside of me will wanna push it, but mostly I just wanna use this as a nice 3 mile tempo run and then an opportunity to shoot the shit with my racing buddies after the race. It will also be nice to know that I'll have over a month to fully recover before my next race on July 8.

I also finally posted a picture to my profile...I really really like that picture, because it's the finish line of when I set my 5K PR back in April in a rainy 52 degrees. The whole picture shows more of the sidewalk and there's nobody in sight behind me, and all of that just gave me a huge boost of confidence. Now I can look at that and say "Ok, I know I can run that well, even in sloppy conditions. Just think of what I can do if train some more."

Well, time to go watch the Tigers/Yankees game...how about those Tigers ;) Have a great Memorial Day.