The 2010 Atlanta’s Finest 5k was certainly a memorable one! I always love local races because many of my friends participate and my family is on the sidelines cheering me on. This year was a particular exciting one- I felt surprisingly great during the race, and set a new 5k record at 16:47! I finished First Master in the race (see overall results), which is an encouraging sign (especially because I’m not getting any younger!).   Here are some of my pictures from the race, which may look a little blurry…my kids are my photographers

The Atlanta Track Club recently interviewed me as the USATF Association Home Town Hero! Many thanks to the Atlanta Track Club and Ian Dube, I’m very honored to have been featured!!

I’ve had to re-adjust my days… I’m not used to having this much time to myself  (I typically have two workouts a day).  Because the tent inhibits my recovery and I am so over trained,  I’m taking off 6 months from the tent which again will inhibit my ability to train but will increase my chances of recovering as quickly as possible.

I’ve cut my miles back to 45 miles/week just to get my body and hormones back in balance from over-training that I did between September and December.  Bermuda’s race in January was over the top for me.

The plan is for me to carry a little more fat, giving me little more estrogen in my body which allows my body to stabilize so I’m not training quite so hard.  The negative is that I had to pull out of the elite races I had planned for this winter/early spring season so I’m now shooting for the April time frame hoping that if things in the next month come together, that would be a realistic time to get going again.  If I can be back into good running mode in the next month or so, then I can start putting a good base together in being ready to go for races.

Worst case scenario, I really want to be ready for the Peachtree Road Race- it’s a race my kids can go to, it in my back yard, and it’s the largest 10k in the nation…10ks are my favorite races. It’s the race I ran well at 2 years ago, and I know most of the people involved in it, and sponsoring it so it’s a great opportunity to be with friends and people I know as well as the elite running community that comes in not only nationally, but internationally.

I also see Heart of the Summer (the Minneapolis road race) as one of the best races for me to hit a record in for a few reasons:
-I’m from Minneapolis and I have a lot of local support at that race
-it’s a nice, flat course that I’m familiar with

Some of the elites from the Minneapolis pro runners are there like Katie McGregor who is one of the best 10k runners in the nation, so she’s a great person to pace with and try to make a record with.

We’re at the airport about to board the plane back to Atlanta. It was an interesting race yesterday, I don’t think I raced well at all. I just mentally felt like I was over-tired, over-trained and feeling kind of frustrated. I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Sliders-Sarah and her husband Steve are both excellent runners and have been encouraging me to rethink my coaching situation and look for different options. I also spent a lot of time with one of the Kenyan’s here- he explained the Kenyan way: keeping your easy days super easy so I’m going to rethink the way I’m training and look for ways I can do more workouts but just make them easier instead of the intense workouts. In the meantime, I’ve been having so many hormonal problems that I’m going to probably need to rethink everything and take it easy for a month to recover…. off to Atlanta.

Here’s what the starting line looked like at the Bermuda International 10k

Jim filmed my warm up ritual… may not be too entertaining but here it is:

…And here’s my finish at the Bermuda 10k- not as good as I had hoped

I’m leaving for Bermuda tomorrow morning, but have to get a run in the morning before my flight leaves.  I had to go over some important rules with my kids, like not making an international call to ask if they can open a bag of chips, which they very well might do-you never know. For some reason they chose to film me reviewing the rules…. maybe they’ll watch it while I’m gone (yeah, right)