I still have two articles about races I ran last year … and you’ll note I haven’t written any new comments.

That’s because last year, on July 3 (2006), I seriously injured my back. I nearly burst a disc – it was impinging on my L4/L5 nerve, right side. Surgery wasn’t required but the surgeon really wanted to operate, especially since my distension was towards the hip side and not towards the back like most people. I opted NOT to have surgery, but instead completed three months of physical therapy.

I have been slowly crawling back to running. I’ve had to start all over again, from the beginning. So in essence, I went, in one weekend, from running 18 miles, to crawling 18 feet to the bathroom. I’m only now hitting the two mile mark. I’ve run only one race this season, a 5K, which was the Flying Pig 5K in Cincinnati. I’m due to run one this weekend, but I’m going to take it slow.

This means my marathon plans are on slow buildup for next year. I’m still planning to run the Air Force Marathon as my first, but I have more than a year of training to get ready and build a solid base of core mileage.

As I progress, I’ll keep the running blog updated.

Okay. So I ran the 15K Human Heart Mini this past weekend. It was my first time running this race, although I did run the 5K race last year (my first ever). So I kinda knew what I had in store for me.

NOT!

Okay. First off, getting there and getting to the races was a comedy of errors. Finally managed to park in a parking lot at 7th and Sycamore. Race start line is at 5th and Sycamore, right? Again, NOT! 5th and MAIN.

Anyway, so Melissa, my running partner, goes off to run the 5K. I go off with Kat to go get my race packet, and hopefully register her. Well, so, she finally decides, yes, she will walk the 5K. Cool! Okay. She goes off to find a bathroom, I go off to collect Melissa after finishing the race, and none of this happened right. Melissa finished the race and I, watching the finishing chutes, TOTALLY miss this. Kat couldn’t find a bathroom, so she goes off to Kinkos down the block, while Melissa and I finally start the 15K. Took us a full minute to get to the start line.

Okay, so we hang for a mile and a half. She decides to run on ahead… now, I’d been over this terrain before, so I knew what to deal with. Which was fine. Better than fine, actually, it flattened out after mile 2 and stayed somewhat decent till 5.5. Heh. 5.5. Oh boy.

You see, someone decided that the race needed to go much further up Torrence this year. They changed the course to start further down 5th, so we figured we’d spend more time down Columbia.

NOT!!!!!

No, we climbed Mount Torrence. And literally, there’s no way to describe it other than Mount Torrence. Actually, the best way to explain it isn’t to describe the uphill. It’s the downhill that puts things into perspective. My Garmin Forerunner was acting well this day, so I had pretty accurate measurements all the way through. Now, after I did the turn around somewhere on this hill, I waited till mile marker 6 to start running again. I had walked ALL the way up.

I run 12:40mm usually. On the way down, I looked at the watch. Mind you, I had started running, and due to the grade I could not stop. My watch was reading….. 6:02 mm. I ran a full half mile at a pace I hadn’t run since high school. YES!

Okay, enough glory. Finished the race, ran into the walkers in the last quarter mile. Blah. 1:59:22.

I’m sitting there calling Kat over and over; meanwhile, she is standing 10 feet in front of me. THAT was funny. The finish line just so happens to be at 5th and Sycamore. Again, about a half mile from the start. And her race had started! So she starts the race, after we bicker about who all is going to do the walk. In the end, both Melissa and I are escorting Kat. She starts 20 minutes down, and is DEAD LAST. DEAD LAST.

We walk. And we walk. And we walk. And of course I am not used to this, because I run, I don’t walk. Kat walks FAST. Umm…. DAMN. She WALKS. She finished ahead of about TWO-THIRDS of the pack. Amazing!

And we got to miss the rain, which was the best thing of the whole day!

Next race: St. Louis.