What a great week including the first Healthy Giraffe event, I set a new personal record in the 5k distance, and my daughter, Morgan, ran in her first indoor track meet for Florida Atlantic University in Birmingham, AL where she also ran her fastest 5k time. I’ll cover the three main categories as the plan for the weekly updates.
Nutrition
I’ll keep this brief as I blogged a full summary of the first Healthy Giraffe event yesterday. It was one fantastic night and I can’t wait for the next one on February 10. Stay tuned for more details.
The website is organically growing as needs are dictating content creation and curation. This week I created a page linked from the Nutrition page with content from John Joseph and another from The Happy Pear. Check out the pages and descriptions as they have quite different stories and experiences – both inspiring in their own ways. The content pulled together from these two are fantastic, trust me.
Performance
It was great to hear from Morgan via Birmingham where she placed 3rd in the 5k with a time of 19:17. I can’t wait to see how she develops and performs in the remainder of the indoor season and then moving into the outdoor season.
I raced the 5k at the St. Pete Classic Saturday morning. This was a ‘B’ race for me meaning I was not doing a full taper (resting) as I progressed through the week. I have begun triathlon training, can’t sacrifice a week to taper, so I had a few hard cycling rides during the week on top of a somewhat lighter load run week. So my goal going in was more mental than attempting to go after my season goal of running an 18:59 time. My personal record time for a 5k going in was 19:17. I thought I would be near that to around 19:30.
There was a pretty brisk wind in our face for just over a mile and I hit my first mile goal pace of 6:06 but my legs paid for that pace fighting the wind, resulting in me struggling in the 2nd mile, where I missed my goal time of 6:12 by seven seconds, coming in with a 6:19. I knew I was within reach still however and I kept thinking – just keep battling, give yourself a chance and you never know what can happen and that’s what transpired.
When mile three started, I now had the wind fully behind me. As loud as the wind was in my face in mile one I swear I could hear a pin drop with the wind now trailing me. I looked at my watch after a tenth of a mile into mile three and I dropped my pace to 5:59. It did not feel like I was running that fast but I kept on motoring. I continued to look down occasionally through the next four tenths of a mile and I maintained the pace….I had a shot!!!
At that point I was NOT going to let the personal record slip so whatever it took, I was going to endure it through the end. I battled a few bad stomach issues coming down the stretch but passed the finish line at 19:09 surpassing my previous personal record by eight seconds.
I cannot wait for Best Damn Race on February 3. This race gave me the confidence that I’m within reach now of attaining my season goal. Lots of work ahead in the next three weeks and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. The lesson here as I have found through experience is to always fight during a race to give yourself a chance. If you think you are slipping, keep pushing and on a particular day you may have a chance to reach in the tank for a little extra. That happened Saturday and it was incredibly gratifying.
Mind
I will say the previous two paragraphs were the most significant note this week in terms of the mind for me. Our mind can really work for us or sabotage us. I really credit the book, How Bad do you Want It?, to help me break through this season in reducing pace, learning how to push through pain, understanding that our body can endure much more than we think it can.
I continue to be challenged with consistency with meditation. I conducted one day of mediation while I was on my inversion table and it was fantastic. With me consistency is everything as with most poeple. I will try again this week to build some momentum. Like the tag line, I will try to Add Health to Your (My) Life, so if it’s even one more time this week that will be a success.
– Add Health to Your Life
The Healthy Giraffe 
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