Again, it's been 10 days. But TWO Saturday mornings ago (the 21st), I ran the Dayton Dragon's 5k downtown. I went into it mainly just wanting to push myself a bit since most of my training runs are relatively slow (like 9-10 minute miles). It was the first race I'd ran since one of the Twilight 12k's up in Anchorage somewhere inbetween having Brayden or Kylee or Blake, not positive of the year! I started out near the front of the pack, at the 7-8 minute "corral". I really tried to consciously NOT go too fast out of the gate for fear of getting sluggish further in. I kept a relatively speedy, but consistent pace and was pleasantly surprised when I hit the mile marker and it said 7:01! Long story short, I kept up a decent pace and finished with a 22:36.7 chip time, a mere 0.8 seconds off of placing in my age group! 114th overall, 13th woman, and 4th in my age group! AND.....definitely a PR for me. I think the previous PR for me was somewhere around 24 minutes, but I couldn't even know for sure because it's been THAT long!
Only official race photo:
AND.....at the finish line, there stood George and the kids! I had no clue they were planning on coming, but it meant so much to me! He got the three of them up and dressed and raced downtown to catch me cross in time! We had a great time seeing the 5/3 Stadium and the few booths/activities there and then walked down to the 2nd Street Market, which is basically like a mini-Reading Terminal Market. Super cute, lots of local fruits, veggies, crafts, honey, syrup, etc. We bought a few giant zucchinis and walked back to the cars. Reason below for zucchini: we've now made this zucchini ravioli twice and the kids have devoured it! Blake loved it so much he wanted to name it Blake's Ravioli, so that's it's official name. Each of the kids (except Dakota at this point) have a recipe named after them: Brayden's Chicken, Kylee's Salmon, and now Blake's Ravioli. Essentially, you wrap the ravioli cheese mixture (ricotta, mozzarella, salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and italian seasoning) in slices of shaved zucchini (the zucchini is the "pasta"). It is amazing.
One of the coolest things about running the 5k was how it peaked Brayden's interest in running! He saw a handful of kids close to his age cross the finish line and now he has the idea of "training" for a 5k. There's the "Dounut Dash 5k" in about a month, and we might sign up for that to run together. He's all about the running when there's doughnuts involved somewhere in there! Last Sunday he decided to join me for a quick jog, so I let him lead and pace the run. We ended up with 1.28 miles at a 9:16 pace! Not to shabby for a 9 year old who has probably never ran a mile straight! We'll see if he keeps it up and wants to continue.
We then spent the late afternoon and evening at Eric and Kelley's celebrating our nephew, Cole's, birthday. Kelley's parents and sister and her boyfriend were all there as well and it was nice to meet her sister and catch up with her parents. The weather was perfect-warm, but not sweltering-and the kids had a blast playing all evening. Unfortunately, no pictures.
Last Monday I managed to get out of work a little early as the OR's weren't too busy. I was pretty excited to be able to get a quick early evening run in and planned on ~10 miles on the trail out towards the Metroparks. At about 2.5 miles in, I jutted off the paved trail onto a little unpaved loop trail I hadn't explored yet. It took me to the edge of Little Beaver Creek, and I saw a rope swing that ended over the water, which looked sufficiently deep enough to cannonball in. I squatted down to feel how cold the water was and on my way up, I got a terrible shooting pain in my right knee-so much so that it darn near took my breath away. I figured I just tweaked something minor and hobbled back out to the main trail. I started jogging slowly on it and the pain intensified. At that point, I decided to walk back towards my car because there's no point in heading further out if I couldn't run. I tried running a few times on the way back, but it was a no-go. Now, 48 hours later, it seems to have resolved, but it was a definite bummer Monday. So I got 2.5 miles running and 2.5 miles walking back to the car. I just have to keep telling myself that something is better than nothing.
Little Beaver Creek front, right before effing up my knee:
Also last Sunday evening, one of the graduating OB/Gyn residents (also happens to be married to one of the graduating anesthesiology residents, now one of my attendings!) happened to have a "for sale" post, selling their zero-turn riding lawn mower. George has been drooling over all the riding lawn mowers, but they're so expensive that we'd decided to hold off on buying one. It takes him close to two hours a couple times a week to mow this beast of a yard with the push mower. Well.....we bought it, and now he has a new "grown up" man toy. We picked it up Monday evening, and he mowed the lawn that night when we got home.....took him ~20-25 minutes!
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