Five miles and feedback.

I'm so into voting, I have a shirt for it! 

Happy election day! If you haven't voted yet, please go now. I'll wait...

Okay, back to running!

This past Saturday, I got to run one of my favorite races of the year: the Annapolis Striders Down's Park 5-miler. I love this race because it takes place in a gorgeous park, and because its usually my first post-marathon run. After months of marathon training, it is such a relief to run something short! I love that I don't have to worry about going out too fast, fueling properly, or any of that long-run stuff.

Last year, I ran this race the day before the NYC marathon. I was leaving straight from the race to get to the marathon expo, and I was terrified that I would not make it on time. So, the very kind race organizers allowed Andrew to volunteer as a parking attendant so I could do a "worker's run" an hour before the regular race. When you run a worker's run, you get credit for running the race (in the Striders' Champ Series), but your time is not officially recorded. So, naturally, I ran a PR of 48:35. I tried to repeat that time a month later in the Celtic Solstice 5-miler, but only managed 49:28. So, I went into this race with 49:28 as my official 5-mile PR. I doubted that I could beat that, but I still hoped to come in under 50 minutes.

When Andrew and I arrived at the race, we were greeted by my running coach Susan, who declared that she was running the race with me. As she noted, we've run many of this year's Champ Series races together, and she decided we should keep our streak going. I was happy with that plan!

Before we started, Susan said that her plan was to take it easy in the beginning and save something for mile 4 1/2. I said that I wanted to go out a little fast and try to hold onto that pace. In the end, we sort of did both. Based on my Nike+ data, we ran the first two miles at about a 9:43 pace, slowed up a bit in miles 3 and 4 (about 9:55) and then ran our fastest time in mile 5. By mile 3, I was definitely struggling to keep up the pace. Somewhere in that mile, we saw a marker for the 1-mile "fun run" happening elsewhere in the park. It said "Fun," with an arrow pointing away from us. I turned to Susan and said "So THAT's where the fun went! Its definitely not here."

Coming into the last mile, I wasn't sure I would be able to pull off a finishing sprint. Then, about 1/4 mile from the finish, Susan and I were met by Bob, another of our running coaches. Bob had finished his race a good 10 minutes before and came back to help us run it in. I couldn't let Bob down. I picked it up and sprinted across the finish line. I swear I saw a 48 on the clock when I crossed the line, but my official time is recorded as 49:02. A new official PR!

After I finished, I grabbed a bagel and returned to the finish line to wait for Andrew. I was expecting him to have a good race. In fact, I was pretty sure he could finish in under 1 hour, but I hadn't said anything to him about it because he seemed a little nervous. As I waited a couple friends came by and said "We saw Andrew and he looks good!" Then, I saw him- crossing the line at 55:33! He was thrilled, and so was I.

Later that day, I paid a visit to the local Lululemon Athletica store. I ran Marine Corps in a pair of their running crop pants. I love the fit of these pants, and they are the perfect length for Fall running. They have three gel pockets: a zippered one in the back and two open ones in the waistband. Prior to MCM, I had only used the back pocket, but its not big enough for the 5 gels I needed to carry to get through a marathon. So, on race day, I tried out the pockets in the waistband. They were really shallow- only deep enough to fit about 1/2 of a Clif Shot packet. The rest of the packet was resting against my stomach. It didn't bother me during the race, so I thought it was fine... until I got home and discovered this:

This doesn't happen in a 5K.

In case you can't tell, that is chafing straight from Hell. Its basically a 2-inch open cut on my stomach. As of today, MCM is 9 days ago and this thing is still healing and still hurts. A lot. It will definitely leave a scar.

I absolutely hate to complain and generally avoid confrontation, but I know that Lululemon really appreciates product feedback and I thought they should see this. So, on Saturday, I nervously went to the store and showed the salespeople. They could not have been nicer! They wrote down my feedback ("Deeper gel pockets, PLEASE!"), and even took down my info so they could invite me to some kind of promo in the future. You know a store has good customer service when their product scars you and you still intend to shop there in the future!

So, the moral of the story is always give your feedback- at the running store and at the polls!