Well, despite the crazy heat (for April), Darla and I made our way on Sunday morning over to the Coaster Run 5k benefiting the Speech and Language Development Center in Buena Park. They offer services for children and young adults with language/learning/developmental disorders, so it was a great cause.

I was up at around 5:30am and got ready pretty quickly since I had laid out all of my clothes and gear before I went to bed on Saturday night. I made a bowl of cream of wheat and then putzed around my apartment for a bit until it was time to head over to the event.

After I got parked, I made my way over to the starting line area and began looking around for Darla. I walked around for about 10 minutes, but never managed to find her. It was time for me to start warming up, so I made my way over beyond the starting chute and began to walk/jog about for about 10 minutes or so. In retrospect, I probably should have delayed my warm-up a bit because the elite racers were taking off before us and I actually had a bit more time than I was thinking.

After the elite racers took off, the rest of us in the 5k race started piling into the start chute awaiting our gun time. Since this was a fairly small race, they weren’t using chip timing. As a result, people were definitely trying to crowd as close as possible to the starting line. I opted to hang back a bit and stay out of the way of the faster runner. I figured I could just relay on my watch instead of getting caught up in the fray.

I knew going into this event that it was going to be hot. The forecasted high had been bouncing around all week to be somewhere between 90-95°F. By the time we got started at 7:45am, it was already in the upper 70′s to low 80′s. By the time I finished, it was 85°F with a heat index of nearly 90°F.

The worst part was on the eastbound portion of each lap. Since it was still early in the morning, the sun was still low in the sky, so there wasn’t much relief from my hat. It was pretty much just shining right into my eyes. Thank goodness for Transitions lenses in my glasses!

There was one water station on the westbound portion of the 5k course that was about 2/3rds way around on the lap. So, we were able to get water at about 1.2 miles and again at around 2.7 miles. I did take some water both times I passed the station. I drank all of it the first time, but then felt a bit queasy afterwards. I only took a couple of good sips the 2nd time around and I was fine with that.

I did a wog combo of 4 mins walking followed by 1 min slow jog for the first 1.5 miles. After that I decided to just stick with walking since it was so hot. Even by the 1.5 mile mark, I was already starting to wheeze pretty badly from where I’d been sick recently coupled with breathing in the very dry hot air. I was really hoping to stick with my wog combo for the whole distance, but decided better safe than sorry given the conditions.

I did have one particular nemesis on the course. There was actually a woman out walking the course wearing a pair of totally flat Keds-type sneakers with ZERO support. She was wearing a denim skirt and carrying a big ass purse over her shoulder. Yes, she finished 25 seconds ahead of me. I have to keep reminding myself that I had a lot of extra weight that I was carrying around that she did not have. It’s difficult for me, but I need to stop comparing myself to people who are not my peers on the course. As Terri said to me today, “she finished ONLY 25 seconds ahead of you.” I guess it’s all about perspective.

Overall, I was fairly pleased with how I did. I finished in 54:30 which was 3:15 faster than my last 5k back in February. The only thing I think that would have made a difference is the heat. Since I don’t really have any control over that, I guess I wouldn’t really have done anything differently.

Here are my official results for the race:

Until next time …