I’m back at the hotel. Let’s just say it was an “interesting” 5k. Nearly a mile of it was done on the dirt horse racing track at Del Mar. I knew in advance that we were starting and finishing at the track, but I didn’t know they meant ON the track. It seemed to slow everyone waaaaay down due to all the ruts and such in the dirt. Apparently this is the first year they’ve done the race at this venue and no seemed to be very happy about it. I’m so covered in dirt that I feel more like I did a trail run than a road race.

By my Garmin, the course was actually a little bit long (3.2 miles) and I finished it in 56:11. Given I’ve been battling the hurting toe all week, had to contend with the dirt track, and it was REALLY HOT out there, I’m generally happy with my performance. Would I have liked to have finished faster? Sure, since my goal is always to finish at least 1 second faster than my previous race, but this one had a lot of variables that just kept that from happening.

In addition to the 3.2 miles I completed during the race, we also had a pretty good walk in from the parking area. After the race was over, I reset my Garmin and measured the distance from the race area back to the parking lot. It was .6 of a mile, so by the time I made the round trip, that’s another 1.2 miles of walking I’ve done today which makes a combined total of about 4.4 miles. I think I’ll take the afternoon off from exercising. ;)

I don’t have another race planned for about a month. That should give me some time for my toe to heal and work a bit more on increasing my running time. Since it takes place on July 26, heat may be an issue at that race as well, but I’ll worry about that closer to race day.

Ok, time for me to go wash the race track off. ;)