The 5K that wasn't

A couple of people asked me about my second 5K of last weekend. Well, I didn't run it. No excuses, I simply fell back asleep after the alarm went off and suddenly it was three hours later. I had all my stuff ready to go, the race information and map printed out, but I just didn't manage to get myself there. Sometimes that happens when I don't pre-register for races, which is one reason that I always sign up early and pay my entry $$ for the big ones!

Instead I watched a good chunk of the first real mountain stage of the Tour de France. I've been watching it carefully each day, taking notes, and spending a lot of time doing research for my new Tour de France Lanterne Rouge blog, so that's why my commentary on this one has been a little slim lately. It's only three weeks each year.

The workout I did instead was nearly the same as a 5K. At midday, when it had gotten up to about 92 degrees, I went over to my 3/4-mile hilly path and did four repeats. It's a winding path on the Four Mile Run Trail with two major dips into gullies and a fair-sized hill, so usually I'm comparatively slow along it. Yesterday I did it my repeats in 9:01, 8:55, 8:40, and then I told myself I could quit and go home if I beat 8:40 - and then I forced out a 7:49! That was enough, the moral equivalent of a 5K without the t-shirt, so I called it a day and headed for the showers.