Hello from Nebraska! I’m traveling this week for work and decided to kick off my trip a little early with a slight detour to Omaha to visit my brother. Since my company is based in Lincoln, I typically try to swing through so I can see him.
While looking for things for us to do, he came across a little 5k called the Harvest Hustle to benefit a local food pantry, and decided to sign us up. Weather in the Midwest is always kind of a toss-up this time of year, but when Saturday hit the mid-seventies, we were both optimistic that it’d be a fairly painless run. We even laughed at some of the cold weather face masks while we perused a local running store Saturday night for new gear.
I finally pulled the trigger on a pair of Zensah compression sleeves. A lot of the runners I follow absolutely swear by them, wearing them before and after events and even sleeping in them. After my half last week, I decided that any gain in performance in recovery was enough to sell me. I’ve now been wearing them for an entire day and don’t want to take them off.
Fortunately, Eric picked up a new pair of compression tights on our trip, because when we woke up the next morning, it was a very brisk 28 degrees! Isn’t that crazy!? My car doors were frozen shut and when I accidentally hit the windshield wiper fluid while trying to turn on the wipers, it froze instantly.
We made it to the park where the event was, but opted to stay in the car to keep warm. I felt terribly for the organizers, who were still in good spirits despite the wind and freezing rain. I guess they usually hold this event in October, but they just had a baby and had to postpone. It was a really small race, only about 50 people or so, so it was cool getting to meet the organizers and just get out and run with people, but without a lot of hoopla. I don’t really know what my time ended up being, as there were no chips, and just a little time clock, but I’m guessing it was somewhere around 30 minutes. I went really easy on myself because my legs still feel a little raw. The cold winds also made it really hard to breathe.
Still, I’m glad I did it. I sometimes need a kick in the pants to keep my running “recovery” from slipping into the double-digit weeks…
We celebrated our PR for coldest run ever with a hot breakfast at Leo’s Diner. We got HUGE omelette’s and somehow I managed to take out a pumpkin pancake. When in Rome right?
Now I say goodbye to Omaha and head to Lincoln! What’d you do this weekend?
