Shenandoah River Front 5 Miler

I weeded the flower bed at church again Friday and spent most of the rest of the day taking it easy and using my inhaler (recovering from Thursday's attack). By late afternoon I was feeling better again, so I got up at 5:15 a.m. for the Shenandoah River Front Five Miler. I used my inhaler just before the race and took off with my friends: Karsten Brown, Jeff Campbell, George Gillies, Daryl Watkins, Joe Rudmin, Melissa Rittenhouse, Butch. . . . That's the real joy of racing -- being with friends and meeting new ones like Patty who just moved to the area, is near my age and running faster than me (at the moment anyway).

It was a fairly cool morning (60s) for mid-July. The Shenandoah race start and half-way point run along the Shenandoah River, so those two spots remind me of Iowa (and make me miss my awesome river-rat brothers!). In fact I wanted to set up camp alongside the three tents set up alongside the river at the half-way point and probably would have had I been in Iowa and had any reason to think a family member was camped there.

We also ran through a couple tunnels twice, one of which dripped water on me and cooled me off a bit. I walked a very short section of the worst hill, but otherwise ran the whole thing. Though four minutes slower than last year, I finished in less than 50 minutes (48:13 or about a 9:36 mile pace). After a random set of DNRs, finishing a planned race did a lot for my psyche; I really needed to plan and complete a goal.