Ran Florida Track Club's Micanopy Ten-Miler Race This Morning

I had long planned to run the 2025 version of the Florida Track Club's February event, the Micanopy 5/10 Miler...I picked the ten miles option, of course.  The day began a little roughly as I experienced a rare bout of insomnia last night and finally just decided to stay up after only about three-four hours sleep.  Then, when I was driving the fifteen miles south through Gainesville and on to Micanopy, I had to contend with some of the thickest fog I have ever experienced.  Still, thanks in part to my Waze app, I got there in plenty of time and handled my pre-race business in time.  The temperature at 8:00 race time was 58 with the pea-soup fog providing 100% humidity...it heated up a bit during the run.  There were 128 people in the race, a little over half doing my ten miles.  I decided beforehand that I would go nice and steady, running with my only walking breaks happening on steep hills.  And there were a few of those that I speed-walked up.  I noticed that the extra five-mile loop that we ten-mile racers went down was configured in the opposite direction from last year's race...later I found out they switched the direction every year.  I liked this year's direction (clockwise) more.  It seems like everything went according to plan, except that I had more energy left at the end and finished second in my age group with a time of 1 hour 36 minutes 50 seconds, more than two minutes faster than my previous personal best (last year) at this distance.  They handed out post-race, as awards, a cool-looking cap with the Florida Track Club logo on it...Melissa suggested I wear it on next week's Depot Parkrun.  And so ends, for the foreseeable future, my running/walking races longer than 5K.  You see, I'm having surgery early in March and it may be a few months before I feel I'll be ready to tackle runs like today's.  That's okay, I just feel grateful for the opportunity for that surgery.  And besides, you and I both know that during the spring and summer here in northern Florida you usually don't see many opportunities for long distance races.  You can view today's race results by clicking HERE...