A victory, of sorts

Well, I wasn't able to run the whole 5k. I had to take a few walking breaks. I offer these top three reasons as my lame justifications:

1. I run in the evenings. Usually around 6:00 pm. The sun is setting, the day is cooling off and I have plenty of energy to run before supper. I've actually been able to run a couple of miles around dinner time but I have never been able to run more than a mile in the mornings. I'm tired, my legs feel like lead, and my motivation is ZERO because I'd rather be sleeping - mornings are not good for my running routine. The 5k today started at 7:00 am. Guess how I was feeling?
2. It has been storming for the last couple of days here. Real doozies. For the first time in my life I heard the Emergency Broadcast System used yesterday. (You know the obnoxious beeping on the tv and radio, usually followed by "This was only a test. If this had been a real emergency . . .") Yesterday I heard the buzz followed by "a flash flood warning has been issued for your area." What? This system actually gets used? In real life? I kind of thought it was a urban myth of sorts. Lets just say the drive to the Christmas party was exciting last night. Anyhow, the result of all the seriously wet weather is seriously muggy conditions when it isn't raining for a few minutes. While it didn't rain during the run this morning, it was like running in an aquarium.
3. The course wasn't marked well (Ladies and Gentlemen, Hickam AFB!) so I had no idea how far we had gone at any point. I need motivation in the form of distance or time. I've gone a mile? Okay, let's go another half mile. Let's do another half. Heck, I would have enjoyed signs saying 1k, 2k, 3k since we were feeling all sorts of metric today. But no. We were just trotting down the course, with no real guidance. Granted, this was less of an issue as the first two, but it still irritated me. Even Bernadette mentioned at some point, "Where's the half-way point? We should be about there." Just then we came around a corner and there was a card table with dixie cups of water. They told us we were halfway and we were to turn around. They had us running on a dead end road. Nice. A loop would have been appreciated. At least I would have had new scenery throughout.
   

That all being said, I finished. It was something like 40 minutes and 22 seconds. Pretty sad. But the time was due to the fact that I walked more than I should have. Or wanted to.

Strangely, for some sick reason as soon as I was done with this one I wanted to do another one. Not immediately, of course, but I wanted to do another one. To do better. And now, eight hours later, I still want to. So I guess I'll have to start occasionally running in the mornings, possibly underwater. With signs.

Bernadette took some photos, so I'll post those when I get them.

Did I mention we went to IHOP afterwards? Yeah, I earned those 1600 calories.