What the 5K medal will look like. We’ll be getting it sometime in December or January.
Before I started having health issues and eventually discovered I had fibromyalgia, I had been trying to train to run (not so fast, but still) for a 5K. Sadly, I never made it to the 5K. I got hit so hard with all-over weakness and diminished fitness and health — one week I had been essentially running a 5K in practice, and the next I could barely run for 3 minutes.
My husband and I are determined to get back to the health and fitness we have enjoyed most of our lives, however. We love hiking and getting out, and hope to make more time for those things. We also hope to try and run some 5Ks, even if we can’t run the entire thing, much less at a fast pace.
I discovered a virtual challenge with a Lord of the Rings-type theme, called the LOTR Villains Virtual Challenge. How could I pass that up? The 5K race has a dragon theme! They’re not even strict on how you “run” the race… walk it or run it — you can even break it up into chunks if you need to.
My husband and I regularly walk on sidewalks and parks, so I decided I wanted to do something to make it a little more special to me if I couldn’t run it. We chose a biking/hiking trail (some photos here from another time we visited the trail to take photographs), and we did plan to do some light running.
Our original plan was to practice, since it’s not a flat surface, and figure out which trails we would use to map out our 5K and then do the 5K for real about a week from now. We had a perfect evening a week or so ago, and Christopher and I had so much fun… we signed him up for the 10K “demon” challenge. So instead of doing the 5K on the day we had originally planned, we will go to another location and walk the 10K.
It was a perfect late-afternoon/early evening. We came across a herd of deer a few times as we made our way down the trail. There were also leaves all over the trail, and on one steep slope I managed to slip and fall twice, but got right back up so I wouldn’t lose time. We would have made it under an hour, but on the way out a large family slowly riding bikes came down the trail. We had to stop and let them by, and it would have been more annoying to try and pause my app/timer, so I didn’t bother. Ah well… that’s part of the trouble when you pick some locations over others. 🙂
So here is the app screenshot from that day, with a few photos my husband took showing some of the flatter sections of the trail.
Our usual pace for a 5K was slower than usual thanks to the terrain, but at least we earned a bigger elevation change than we had done before while recording past workouts. 🙂
I guess I removed some of the older photos showing the bigger hills. It was a great hike, and I’m glad we’re going to do the 10K (walking).