Just a nice 10k!
They call it the Northeast Road Runners Winter 10k, and today the weather was, in fact, on the wintry side--hefty headwind and temps in the 30s--but the beautiful clear sky and sun gave promise of spring.This race pretty much also opens the spring racing season in Philadelphia, so it's a favorite of mine--a chance to touch base with old friends and run on a flat, scenic out-and-back course... with a headwind on the way out... did I mention that? :)
My goal today was to beat or at least run my age in minutes, but ... well, instead I ran next year's age in minutes... 56:14.
But there were a lot of positives:
--The headwind during the first half became a tail wind in the second half!
--I beat my time in Brian's Run
--I was healthy (last year, I had to miss the race because of illness)
--I set a better pace in this 10k than I'd done in the first couple of 5k's last year.
--And I even won an award in my age group.... second place for women 50-59. And yes, there were more than two women in this age group! ;) (But I don't know if there were more than three... results not yet up on the web site... Never mind, though... we three showed up to run!)
Sometimes the quality of the experience defies the numbers... the friends, the sunlight on the water, the rowers, the pair of birds soaring in tandem over the bike path, the sheer blessing of health and the ability to run races at 55... Enroute back, I passed a man coming the opposite direction... with a cane... and one leg.... and I realized just how lucky I was to be running this race. But it would be unfair to that man to stop with that realization. When I think of it, what a hardy soul he was to be out for a walk on such a chilly day... and rather than assume that he was unhappy, as he might have had a right to be, with his condition, I wonder if he too was focusing on the beauty of the day and his good fortune to be out and about.
It was a good beginning to the racing season... but it was more than that. As Vietnamese poet and philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh reminded me this morning on the NPR program, "Speaking of Faith,"* we need to cherish the present, in and of itself, that in the present, there is value. In this race at this time, regardless of results or experiences before and after, there is value.
* Anyone who'd like to listen to the program can click on the following link: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/ You're in for a treat!
posted by DPMcManus @ 12:24 PM
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