352 Gets Frostbite

Today marked the one year anniversary of my first ever race. Last year I entered the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous Frostbite Footrace with a friend of mine in our attempt at starting down the path to run a marathon in June, which we both did successfully. Today was the Frostbite Footrace 2010 as it was the kick-off of Fur Rendezvous 2010 and the 75th Anniversary of Fur Rondy (as it is known to the locals, or just Rondy).

I was entered to run the race, but my friend had to pass on this one. I was a bit apprehensive to run this race as I haven't run any races since the Kenai River Run 1/2 marathon last Fall and have gotten a bit soft (polite way to say fat and lazy). I have been running, but cannot get on the horse like I should and the thought of racing actually put butterflies in my stomach as I drove to the race today. Once I got there and knew not a soul in the early crowd, I thought what am I doing here? But, I have run several races on my own and although I wanted my pal to run this one with me as it was sort of a milestone for me, I decided it didn't matter and I was going to run for me and me alone.

I had picked up my bib and shirt on Thursday, my bib number is 352. Today I checked in and stretched out, after I had stretched out at home for a while, trying to psych myself out I think and came up with the name Jimmy Jak, he is the ultimate loser, the fat kid no one picks on their team for sports, the also-ran, the never-made-it, the underdog, my daily affirmation. Jimmy Jak and I are going to take on the world and see what we can find out there. One day Jimmy Jak may just disappear, and if he does I will know it is because he found something or someone greater out there to inspire and push forward. But until he goes away he will be running with me, my muse, my shadow, myself.

The race went well and despite a frosty start temperature of 15 degrees the race was good, although I think it got colder as the morning progressed. I ended the race a bit slower than previous 5k races with an unofficial 29.56 time. My official time hasn't been released as there was a small technical glitch with the timing system, but it doesn't really matter as it was not a true technical race. It was a lot of fun and after it was over I ran eight blocks over and waited to do the loop again in the Grand Parade, then headed to work. All in all it was a great day.

With the race and a few warm-up I added 4.34 miles to my tally today. I tried to add the distance of the parade as well and found out the Nike+ does not like walking at all, as it registered a 1.6 mile trip as .08 miles. I deleted the parade route from my runs and will have to look into the Garmin watch I think for tracking walks and runs as well as remote treks.

Although it is still winter this should be the starting or turning point for the next 113 days (Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon is coming up and is sooner than it seems). I am going to work on getting on top of that running mustang and see if I can get it tamed a bit and get me running in the right direction.

My total distance this year is 81.79 miles with a distance of 4883.21 yet to come in the quest for Davie. This puts me at Long Lake, a popular fishing lake along the Highway, both in summer and ice fishing in the winter.


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