Tomorrow I will be running a 5k fun run. My hit and miss training endeavor began back in May. This past Saturday I had planned to jog part of the course to prepare myself. As I mentioned in a previous post, the route I’ll be traveling is one laid out on a cross-country course. I showed up on the athletic field only to find a number of college teams prepping for an invitational meet. My grandiose plan went out the window.
Not to be dismayed, I walked over to the 400 meter track for one last workout before the fun run. Here’s where the my tale turns humorous. I began jogging laps, taking care to press lap on my iPhone each time I passed my water bottle propped up against the base of a light tower. During the course of the workout, I became convinced 16 laps was the 5k distance equivalent. So I jogged and jogged and jogged racking up laps.
At lap 14 I began to tire and pumped a couple favorite songs into my ear buds for some much needed inspiration. I ended my workout after lap 15 and decided to wander over to the cross-country venue to check out the race. I did not expect to see a total workout time of an hour and ten minutes. That was too much time for having not walked a single lap! Something was amiss and it troubled me the whole walk home.
I sat down on the sofa and began listing out my lap times on a piece of paper. The problem wasn’t with my iPhone, it was me. After much thought, it finally dawned on me 2.5 laps on a 400 meter track equals one kilometer. Since the race is 5k, I only needed to run 12.5 laps (not 15). I felt like a moron. My wife came to my rescue, “honey, at least you know you can jog the distance!”
Bring it on! I’m ready as I’ll ever be.
Less than two weeks of training remain. As it turns out the 5k fun run I’m participating in takes place on a cross-country course. I downloaded a map of the course and printed out a copy. Thursday afternoon I decided to hit the trail. Unfortunately I neglected to bring the map with me and wandered off course as I tried to visualize the route from memory. On the positive side, it is a good gravel trail. However, much of the race is run in the woods on crisscrossing trails. Despite my inability to navigate the course, I was able to jog continuously for 20 minutes, which near as I can tell is about 2k. Part of that time amounted to retracing my steps so I could live to tell about it!
Scraps 