Inauspicious end to season

I haven't posted here for a while 'cause I *gasp* haven't been running very much. Yeah.

So after I ran pretty well in my last 5k I just lost the will. I was going to go and run one last one to try to get under 16:20, but I hadn't pre-registered, registration required cash, and I had no cash that morning. Oops.

So I've been focusing on weightlifting and learning how to swim so I can do triathlons. Weightlifting is what it is. Swimming is horrible. I am the worst swimmer ever. I go to the pool and get lapped by everyone, even the people that are splashing around like they don't even care. But I am going to take lessons, and I am going to gain the ability to smoothly swim the distance necessary, even if it's really slow, and I'll just catch the swimmers on the run.

I went out to the 'burbs to see my family for Thansksgiving and ran the Elmhurst Turkey Trot. Didn't quite get far enough up to the front for the start, so the first half-mile or so consisted of getting run into and kicked by non-runners trying to push ahead of people and cut over to the sidewalk to see how close they could get to the lead before running out of gas. After it cleared up I considered just sprinting and seeing if I could catch the leaders (we get lots of good runners out, guys who will run under 16 without even trying) at the mile, and then just jog it in. But I saw one of my friends from town running, like me, semi-seriously, and I just caught up with him and we ran a pretty fair remainder of the race. First mile was through in 6 minutes, second in 11:15. So the splits weren't close to accurate. I got passed by some people in the last mile, and then tried to latch on to some of them. I was reminded why big races are a good thing. Without those guys passing me I would have fallen apart, but by hanging on to the back of their pack for a half-mile I think I ran pretty respectably to the finish in 17:15. Considering the insanity of the first mile and my lack of training that's a lot better than I thought I'd do.

I went back after finishing to run the last few blocks with my dad, who finished in 22:49. He thought that the course must have been short until we went on mapmyrun.com and verified that it really was a full 5k. And then we stayed up until 3am talking about cross-country running. He's been running pretty well lately despite that his cholesterol medication makes his legs really sore, and that he has some other nagging injuries. So I was happy for his finish.