Between Seasons

Today is Thanksgiving – traditionally the day we reflect on our blessings and fortify ourselves with truly yummy food to withstand the holiday onslaught ahead. For me, it’s also a time to catch up on my life and contemplate endings and beginnings.

I finished my 2008 season with the Richmond Half-Marathon. My time was not as fast as I’d hoped it would be, but it was faster than I’d feared it might be based on my training runs. There apparently was a problem with my chip and so initially I wasn’t listed in the official results, but an email to the race organizers remedied that.

I’m glad I’m done with running for awhile. If I didn’t want to make a solo attempt at an Olympic distance race in 2009, I might be done forever. I’ve gotten so slow, “running” seems a misnomer and somewhat pointless, when walking is much easier on my various body parts. And there were the photos from the Half as I neared the finish line – I look positively decrepit! Of course, I had just dashed across the street to retrieve my hat, which had blown off my head. It was a TG hat, and I wasn’t about to let it get away!

On many levels, my year was a success. I made my goal of earning a SetUp Events age-group award (actual prize unknown, but my name’s at the top of the list). My plan of doing more events than anyone else in my age group was the key. However, five sprints between late March and early October (plus one more non-SetUp sprint) is not a schedule I think I’ll repeat next year. I had a few PRs in the swim and bike legs of individual races. Though we’re only talking seconds, any improvement gives me incentive to keep “tri-ing.”

I didn’t do a whole Olympic distance by myself, as I’d hoped to do, but the HyVee relay with my sisters was my favorite race of the year. We’re already signed up to do it again on June 28, 2009.

My new season starts on Monday, December 1, when indoor cycling begins. Before then, though, I have closets to clean. And I’ll enjoy my turkey and pumpkin pie.

It was a What???

It was reported in last week’s paper that a large yellow animal, thought to be a lion, or maybe a bobcat, had been seen roaming a suburban street in Southside Richmond early Tuesday morning. Now this was not just any street – it was my street! The street I run on when I run in my neighborhood. If I’d done the run I usually do on Tuesday mornings, I might have seen this animal, too. Or maybe it would have seen me first. Would it have thought “tasty breakfast morsel,” or “frightening apparition”? The animal has not been found, or seen again on the street, but I ran at West Creek today.