Ukraine Do It 5K Recap! Well, Sort Of...Easy Weight Loss

It's kind of funky but I'm a fan of the race t-shirt - I think I'm just loving the orange right now.

On Saturday Jeff and I were supposed to run the 7th annual Ukraine Do It 5K.  We ran this race back in 2013 when they held it for the first time, and it slipped off of our radar because there are so many races this time of year in our town, but I happened to see a notice about it recently so Jeff and I decided to run it again.

Despite my aching hip and knee, I've actually been having a really good running season, which I attribute to being stronger thanks to my workouts at BCS Fitness, and I've been working myself up to running a 5K (3.1 miles) without stopping; I was planning on giving it a try with this race.  I had a new music playlist made with calm songs for the first mile so I wouldn't go out too fast, building up to peppier songs, and finishing with Thor's theme song (Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin) - you can't help but run fast when that song is playing!

The race didn't start until 9:00 am, and at 8:00 am, the strong thunderstorms that were predicted for start time had been pushed to 10:30 am - perfect!  We got dressed and made the five minute drive to the park where the race was, said hello to the organizers, and then went on a little half mile warm up, which I never do, before returning to the starting area - we actually have proof of that in this picture:

See us in the background?  (photo swiped from the event's Facebook page)

The start/finish area had a lot of fun signs but this one cracked me up the most:

It wasn't chip timed, so two people were set with a clipboard to mark down finisher order.

Picture courtesy of the event's Facebook page.

The organizers were keeping watch on the weather via their phones because of the lightning - apparently the city has a rule that if there is a lightning strike within 10 miles of an event, you have to stop.  We got as far as lining up at the start line, listening to the pastor say a short prayer, all the while hearing thunder in the distance...and then, lightning was noted 5 miles away.  DANG IT.  They took a picture of us looking disappointed:

Rats.

If this was going to be a quickly passing storm, we would have waited it out, but the radar showed some really heavy rain coming, and a lot of it, so the race was canceled.  I was sad because for once I felt ready, I wasn't nervous, and I was actually excited to run a race. 

The rain started falling and the lightning got closer so Jeff and I hightailed it to our car and went to Blue Baker, where just a few Renegades were there, but one of the most important ones was in attendance, so that was nice:

Very intently watching Despicable Me, his favorite movie..."GRU!"

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Since we didn't get to race on Saturday, Jeff and I made plans to run the route on Sunday morning.  We crossed our fingers that the weather would be better but nope - just more strong storms.  The Austin Cap10K, which we've run several times, was cancelled that morning as well - it was just a bad weekend for racing in Texas.

We ran at the park yesterday morning where it was only 59 degrees at 5:45 am, yay!  Of course the humidity was 94%, but still, it felt cool.  Jeff and I ran the first loop of the Ukraine Do It route, which had a nice hill at the beginning and another one close to the end, so my legs and lungs got a nice workout.  We ended up running 2 miles; I have to remind myself that 2 miles at the park is harder than 2 miles in my neighborhood, and I need to be OK with how much harder it feels.  Tomorrow we'll run the flatlands, aka our neighborhood, for 3 miles, and then we have another 5K on tap for Saturday; the current weather prediction is thunderstorms, but I'm holding out hope that they won't materialize until later in the day. 

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Workouts at BCS Fitness have been intense this week - a real heart-pounding sweatfest!  On Monday I noticed that nothing was registering on the monitors with the MyZone heartrate monitors that some of us wear, and sure enough, when we finished we discovered that there was a glitch and - get this - we didn't get credit for our workout!  Dang it, I wanted to see my red zones!  I wanted my points (you need to get 1300 per month to stay at your color level).  I joking complained to Jared that all I got out of that workout was muscle building and fat burning, but where were my points?! 

It's all good, I only started wearing the HR monitor to see if I was working as hard as it felt like I was working, and hey - I was.  When I'm there I give it my all for the 30 minutes; it's nice to have the validation of the MyZone stats but I know I'm doing as much as I can, so I'm fine with that.

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I started physical therapy for my left leg issues on Monday - the first visit was mostly an assessment, with some light exercises to work on at home.  I go back tomorrow and then for another couple of weeks at least; fingers crossed this helps!  I'll have more of an update when I've got a few more sessions under my belt.

from My Journey to Fit http://bit.ly/2G7gp0v
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