Running for Fun

I am not, by any interpretation of the word, a fast runner. In a race, I am not quite the tortoise, but I am definitely no gazelle (or any other kind of fast moving animal). My "best" pace has been about an eight and a half minute mile in a 5 mile or 10K race, and my typical racing pace is close to nine minutes per mile.

Yet I continue to enter road races, and I have no intention of stopping. My only real competition is myself, although that person just ahead of me is a target too. Somehow, in a race I am able to increase my rather slow and plodding weekday running pace by a minute or more (perhaps a lot more) per mile, and I really don't know how this is possible. The adrenaline of the race? The runners surrounding me that I try to keep pace with or pass? I just don't know.

However, as a workout or training exercise, that is exactly why I do it. I run about four days a week at a comfortable pace, and I know I still get a good workout doing so. But the races are the jolt to the metabolism, the extra kick in the pants that I can't seem to give myself when running the streets alone.

Maybe I'm burning the same 100 calories per mile that I would at a slower pace... but at least I'm getting it done a lot quicker!

And I sure have a lot of race shirts to wear to the Y.

Here I am as a ghost (in orange) in a Halloween 10K last weekend.