Atta-Girl...

I don't know how many times I caught my daughter trying to sneak a look at my blog this weekend... I was tempted to say, "It's a little hard to write a blog when I'm doing your laundry and cutting the grass." Alas, I think she's waiting for my race report, so here it is.

Allie and I were accompanied by my niece, Tania. As mentioned before, Allie has a pre-race goal of going sub 30, but I felt her fitness pointed to more like a 32/33. She had another goal, though - run the whole 5k, only walking through the water stop.

This is a big race - more than 2800 runners and walkers. I'd learned my lesson in this one last year, so we lined up closer to the start than you'd expect, due to all the walkers who didn't know where to line up.

We went into the first mile and settled in around 9:30 pace for the first half mile. After that, Allie said it felt a bit quick to her, so we nudged down to around 10:00 pace. She was talking to us, but also working. A good place to be on the first mile.

Around the one mile mark, we also passed my in-laws, for the first of four times, obviously with camera in hand. Alas, it's not a digital camera, so you'll just have to wait for some scans.

Also around the one mile mark, we passed Allie's friend, Dalton, a 12 year old boy who'd decided to race that morning on zero training. He ran the first mile in 8 something but then decided to walk the final two.

As planned, we walked through the one water stop. Allie poured water all over herself and drank some more. We did the second mile in about 10:30.

The third mile on this course is tough, with a long slow incline. By this point, Allie was asking to walk for just a bit. Though I honored every request to slow down during the race, I played tough Daddy this time and told her to keep going, and she did.

We made the last mile move quicker by counting people we were passing - more than 10 in that final stretch. With 50 yards to go, I told her to take off and she did, passing 3 soccer moms with her final kick. She finished in 34:12, good for top 15% of her age group. Aside from the water stop, she never walked.

All in all - I was very proud of her because she met her goal and also because she did the work that enabled her to meet the goal. She rocked.

In other news...

Friday, I went shoe nuts... making the longish drive to Flying Feet in York. This is my favorite running store in Central PA, though the Lancaster to York traffic SUCKS these days. The Flying Feet guys made it all worthwhile, though. I got my brand spanking new Asics Nimbus X's and a fresh pair of Roclite 305's.

Saturday PM, I decided to go for my long run, figuring that a 34 minute 5k earlier in the day would have no ill effect on me. I was wrong. It was a rather disheartening 12 miler @ 8:07 pace, and felt much much harder. A bit of a bummer and I called in an unplanned rest day for Sunday.

The end of May/start of June will be interesting - with 3 races in a 4 week period. To prepare for this, it's time to throw some speedwork and tempo stuff into the mix. I've done a nice slow aerobic build to get me ready for an intense summer, but it's time to get on the pain train for a little while. I'm doing much more mileage than I was a year ago, and I'm hopeful this old body will respond nicely.

Thanks to all the comments about the A1C's, too -- healthy diabetics are happy diabetics. :)