50k recovery and a 5k

The best way to recover from a 50k? Not a 5k. But if I had to pick a 5k, this was the best one to do. I ran exactly zero miles (excluding ones with Hunter) between races, instead hosting some out-of-towners: Megan and Annie, then Hunter's Mammo and Nanny. We had a blast, and Jeremy and I even squeezed a date in.

So Sunday morning was a new 5k for the Ronald McDonald house, being held in accordance with a new bike race downtown. The crit course was .8mi on South Main, a rejuvenated section south of downtown with lots of historic houses and great restaurants. And as a commenter (erroneously) said, how perfect that 4 x .8 miles is a 5k (once again, can't my races ever be short?). 

The timing was perfect since I could sneak away before Hunter woke up, and he'd be very entertained by his grandmother and great aunt anyway, so off I went. As few people as I know in town, one of the race organizers I did know, and she hinted that I might be out front. 

I was. There was a guy ahead of me through half a mile, but he took a wrong turn, squeezing through the line of barricades instead of following their curve. The guys behind me started shouting "left, take a left!!" to me, and it was more than obvious which way I was supposed to go. 

After just 8 corners and one long hill, I was back around to the start line with 3 more laps to go. Soon after crossing the line and passing the announcer and stage, a bike escort showed up beside me. He followed me and gave a few encouraging words, mostly while chatting with the course monitors who were commenting about how fast I was going! You could tell they were cyclists and not runners, though, because my less than blazing 6:38 pace wouldn't normally be commented upon. I really appreciated it, regardless. 

Probably the best spectator/cyclist comment, that almost made me laugh had I not been breathing too hard up the hill for the 4th time, was, "So what do they run, like 16 minutes?" Spoken like a true criterium racer. My escort knew it was 4 laps, but still told me "one to go!" when I actually had just a quarter mile to go. I gasped a "no I'm done after this one!", and thought of how fitting that would be after that indoor "800m" in college where we ran an extra lap on the 160m track. Torture. At the finish, the announcer asked me for my time. Ha! 

It was tough actually racing this 5k since there was no one around, not even any men close to me. I tried to push it a few times and found that my quads would let me know that they were definitely NOT recovered from the 50k. I ran a few cool down miles before driving off through the closed bike course where racers were starting to warm up (oops!), and I went straight to the bakery down the street to reward myself with coffee and muffins. 

I forgot to run again this week until today, Thursday. I did swim at one of my all time slowest paces, and made it to the acupuncturist AND the structural integrationist to work on my back and hip kinks. Maybe I'll continue this recovery/taper routine until Saturday, when my 19th season of triathlon commences. I hope this season is half as fun as my first.