General Personal Running Info

Starting this Saturday, the Gainesville road race running season unofficially begins with a five-kilometer race that pretty much traces one of my training courses. I don't know that I will run in this one (I probably won't) but I may well enter the Dog Days 5K run the following Saturday. That race, which I ran in last year, also traces the same course but in the opposite direction. Further down the calendar is a four-mile race and then a half-marathon. Dare I run in the half-marathon?

To be perfectly truthful, I haven't run with the same intensity for the past few weeks that I had been doing. One big reason is that I simultaneously suffered an illness and injury that affected the same area of my body, effectively incapacitating me for a week. Also, I've gained a few pounds recently and that extra weight isn't all that much fun to drag around with me while I'm running. Still, I try to get out and run a reasonable distance around my home neighborhood from time to time. The weather hasn't been very cooperative lately, with days being either too hot or too stormy. But I suppose other locations have their own problems with climate, with runners living there learning to "run" around them.

I'm pretty confident about being able to finish a 5K race, even though my finishing time may not be as well as it was last year. I probably wouldn't have any trouble with the four-miler either, as long as my pace myself properly. But that half-marathon (13.1 miles)? I don't know yet.