Saturday, July 03, 2004
Most Tiring Birthday Evar
Would you believe I turned 28 today? No? Good for you, because I'm 36.
I ran my first 10K today; this was the "Run White & Blue" event in Long Beach. It was a run along the bike path right on the beach near the Queen Mary, so it was somewhat scenic. But it was a far cry from the Nike Run Hit Wonder we did in April. The Nike run had 15,000 men, women, and children all out for a nice relaxing day of family fitness. Today's run was more like 200 Olympic hopefuls. OK, maybe it wasn't that bad but as soon as I arrived I realized these people were generally a little more hardcore. I felt a bit intimidated and out of place. They just all looked in shape, and I hated every one of them. As the 9:00 start time approached I tried to wander towards the back of line so I wouldn't get in anyone's way. Let's just say that during the run I passed far fewer people than passed me. I certainly didn't finish last; I was probably in the bottom third though.
Still, I am very pleased with my time: I finished in 60:15. Of course, in a way it would have been better if I was a little slower and had a time of 61 or 62 minutes, because now I'm stuck with "if I was just 15 seconds faster I would have broken 1 hour." Oh well.
One way which this run blew the Nike event out of the water was with the snacks. At the finish line, they had the typical Power Bars and Creatine Fruit punch or whatever, but they also had tons of mini bags of CRAP. I took 2 bags of pretzel sticks, a bag of Ruffles and a bag of mini Oreos, which I ate over the next 2 hours or so. According to weight/speed charts, I burned about 750 calories during the run. I scarfed down about 800 calories of junk afterwards. Which means it would have been healthier for me to just stay home in bed.
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Would you believe I turned 28 today? No? Good for you, because I'm 36.
I ran my first 10K today; this was the "Run White & Blue" event in Long Beach. It was a run along the bike path right on the beach near the Queen Mary, so it was somewhat scenic. But it was a far cry from the Nike Run Hit Wonder we did in April. The Nike run had 15,000 men, women, and children all out for a nice relaxing day of family fitness. Today's run was more like 200 Olympic hopefuls. OK, maybe it wasn't that bad but as soon as I arrived I realized these people were generally a little more hardcore. I felt a bit intimidated and out of place. They just all looked in shape, and I hated every one of them. As the 9:00 start time approached I tried to wander towards the back of line so I wouldn't get in anyone's way. Let's just say that during the run I passed far fewer people than passed me. I certainly didn't finish last; I was probably in the bottom third though.
Still, I am very pleased with my time: I finished in 60:15. Of course, in a way it would have been better if I was a little slower and had a time of 61 or 62 minutes, because now I'm stuck with "if I was just 15 seconds faster I would have broken 1 hour." Oh well.
One way which this run blew the Nike event out of the water was with the snacks. At the finish line, they had the typical Power Bars and Creatine Fruit punch or whatever, but they also had tons of mini bags of CRAP. I took 2 bags of pretzel sticks, a bag of Ruffles and a bag of mini Oreos, which I ate over the next 2 hours or so. According to weight/speed charts, I burned about 750 calories during the run. I scarfed down about 800 calories of junk afterwards. Which means it would have been healthier for me to just stay home in bed.
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