Friday, June 13, 2008

(Lo Sport) 10K!

Well, it happened again. I got signed up for another race! This one took a bit more out of me however and I have not been able to run since (Nearly three weeks and counting) due to bad knees.

The race was the “Duomo 10K” and both the start and finish lines were in front of the Duomo (Totally cool!) The race began under seriously threatening skies on a Sunday morning in mid May at 9:30 am. In total there were just shy of fifteen hundred runners in the race.

Our course was simple, straight through the city towards the Arno River, over the Ponte Vecchio and up and around the prettiest street in the city “Viale Michelangelo”. The problem with the Viale is that it plays to my weakness, a serious downhill following a long up hill climb of about two and a half miles. I love the up hill part, but the down hill is hard on my knees.

As soon as we arrived at the Viale, the skies opened (About a quarter of the way through the race). The rest of the run was in a torrential downpour! Lets put it this way, with about a mile to go, I gave up on jumping over puddles and just started running right through them, figuring it was impossible to be any more wet than I already was!

When I crossed the finish line at the conclusion of the 6.25 miles, I was shocked to be handed my “Place Card” showing that I came in 50th out of nearly 1500 runners! My finishing time was 42:37. I was happy with the result, but bummed that my running career was immediately put on hold for an indefinite period of time :>(

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