Weekend Miles
Memorial Day weekend brought plenty of time for all things running.
This year Memphis hosted the inaugural Great American River Run Half Marathon, which follows the Mississippi River through downtown Memphis. Because it was the first year of this event, they were in bad need of volunteers so Eric and I both signed up to crew a water station. Neither of us had any interest in running this race - 13 miles in downtown Memphis in May? No thank you! I can put myself through that kind of pain and suffering later in the summer for free.
Welcome to the mile 5 aid station!
Sometimes volunteering at a race really motivates me to sign up for the event the next year. This did not. The runners coming through mile 5 already looked tired, hot and they still had a ways to go. There were a couple times when I couldn’t even hand out the Powerade fast enough. It will be interesting to see if this race happens again next year, and I’m totally impressed with everyone who ran it, but it’s not on my running buck list.
Sunday I made it to the afternoon class at Cycle Bar. We just had one open up in Memphis and while I kind of feel like it is cheating on my regular spin class at the YMCA, I do enjoy the swanky set up- cycling shoes, digital leaderboards, the works. We went to the symphony the evening before where much wine was consumed and I paid for it in class. I felt like I was drowning in my own sweat and sweating out every drop of rosé I had consumed. Somehow I survived class AND was shocked when the email with my stats arrived and I managed to do better than my previous class. Not too shabby!
Monday morning I set out to run the 6 miles I had scheduled for the weekend, but failed to complete on Saturday or Sunday. It was a warm morning, but at least my run wasn’t boring since I cut through the park and ran along the Memorial Day run for awhile and spotted Miles cheering the other runners in the park, which was good motivation to pick up my pace a little.
Today was just some lazy, rainy miles through our neighborhood. I can’t really complain because at least it wasn’t hot!
I also signed up for the annual Road Race Series today using my new name! I sat the series out last year, but am happy to be running it again this year. I’m hoping to be back in racing/marathon training shape come August, so there’s lots of work to be done....and yes, definitely planning on running a full this year...and probably a half marathon on Labor Day weekend. Details to come!