Wrigley River Run 2010

First, I apologize for these grainy videos with no audio. Oh, after I posted it, there was audio after all! Yay!
Tadpole Trot Start

Tadpole Trot Finish

What was the goal for today at the Wrigley River Run? To be able to run. What will this day bring, I wondered? Having not run since last Tuesday to make my aching ankles recover from the overstretch I suffered that day, I didn’t know if it was too soon for me to try running again. But I had made my decision to show up at the starting line of this neighborhood race and find out (http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2010/06/run-or-bust-on-saturday.html). More on this shortly.

There was a proliferation of AREC shirts at the race and our running club was represented very well. Wow! The organizers outdid themselves this year! This race was well attended despite another race going on in downtown Long Beach with what I surmise, bigger organizers and sponsors. There were three bands in this Wrigley River Run 10K/5K/Kid K race and all these from a grassroots, community event! Buono’s Pizzeria was at the finish as usual and I loved the taste of artichoke pizza last year so I asked for that again this year. The Buono’s people who were serving told me it was called the Giorgio. There were also bagels and bottled water for post race nutrition. The swag included: a couple of Clif Builder Protein bars, Myoplex Nutrition Shake, Wheaties Fuel cereal, Squiggles Twist fruit, California Dried Plums, coupon for $7.00 off at Buono’s (note to Buono’s: even though the pizza box shaped cardboard container the coupon came in was a nice gimmick, it was a waste of paper products), and numerous other discount coupons including a free Yoga session at Free Spirit Yoga. There was also free stride analysis from Roadrunner Sports store and free massages from Beauty and Wellness Day Spa.

The Tadpole Trot was fun to watch and it gave me chance to take a couple of video clips with my new cell phone. The way that kids start their run with reckless abandon is very exciting to see, because to them, it’s play time. As of this draft, I haven’t seen the videos yet or transferred them to my computer. I really couldn’t see what I was recording because of the sun’s glare, so it would be interesting to see what I was pointing my cell phone at. Update: I transferred the video files to my computer but the sound was missing even though there was sound when I played them on the cell phone. The video was grainy, at best. This is my first video upload so please forgive me for the poor quality.

You cannot imagine how anxious I must have been about how my ankles were going to feel the next morning when I went to bed on Friday night, because I woke up about four times during the night to check the time. Should I save my ankles for another day, or should I at least give running a try? After I picked up my number and swag bag and took them to my car, I started my warm up in an isolated area of the race location. My thoughts were: will I limp, be in pain, feel ok, or bag it for another time? Although my stride was heavy on the left leg, my right ankle didn’t hurt so much, so after a mile and a half warm up, I declared myself ready to run in the race at a slow and comfortable pace, hoping not to pound the ground so hard. I started running with Nancy the first half mile and continued with Leila (both are from our running club, that's Leila in red at the photo above) for the next three miles. I vowed to keep it as easy as possible, hold myself back,  and just finish the race with the least amount of pain. However (!!! I knew there was going to be a however somewhere in here!), at about the 3 ½ mile mark at a turn going back to the riverbed, I lost Leila because I picked up the pace slightly to catch a fellow ARECer slightly ahead. Darn if I wasn’t doing it again: doing the catch, recover, and release! This practice got repeated the rest of the way to the finish line. Along the course, I made sure to thank the volunteers who were manning the water stations, street corners, and turnaround points, even towards the end when I was gasping for breath.

Well, so much for trying to run an easy pace. What I tried to do was increase my stride turnover rate slightly but keep my feet closer to the ground to decrease the pounding. Oooh, were my ankles glad it was only six miles! My days of negative splits are long gone and forgotten, but on this day, I managed to do it one more time. Forget about checking mile splits. I only checked my time after I crossed the finish line and based on effort, I knew it was a negative split run. Even though I ran slightly slower than last year, I’m not disappointed and still happy because I was able to run at all. I’m not an overly religious person but I thank and praise God for endorphins! Hallelujah!

Thanks for this photo Deb C.!

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