Run With The Heroes 5k

In my pursuit of a sub-20-minute 5k, I somehow managed to run two this weekend. If the second, a timed race, hadn't been short, I would have reset my PR twice, while still being short of my goal. The Saturday run was a fun run, mostly people in the running group I run with Tuesdays and Thursdays, except the fast people didn't show up for whatever reason, and I wound up "winning." Sunday's result was even more shocking: Out of 57 people in my age group, I finished first, and I was 21 out of 700 total. While I'm pleased with my time of 20:13 (for just under 3 miles by my watch), I have more work to do to reach my goal.

Ironman Louisville: The Race

Well, I did it. It didn't go as well as I had hoped, but it didn't go nearly as badly as it could have. While the swim and bike went pretty much as I had expected, the run came down to just keeping putting one foot in front of the other. With an overall time of 15:30:16 and splits of 1:37:00, 6:16:23, and 7:11:07 (swim, bike, run), I hardly set the world on fire, but I did accomplish my main goal of finishing without seriously injuring myself. I had hoped to finish under 15 hours, and I thought sub-14 might have been possible. If I had been able to improve on my marathon PR (I walked the only full marathon I had done previously), my total time would have been under 15 hours. For my first full Ironman, I don't think it's that terrible of a time. Also, while this is by far the most epic one day I've ever had, I haven't quite decided if, overall, it's quite as epic as climbing Gannett Peak solo last July (summit day on that expedition has now been bumped down to second most epic day ever).