It's Racing Season!

Ah...daylight savings, St. Patty's Day, spring...and a return to racing season for me. I really thought I would have done some of the early races this year, but it just didn't happen with the marathon training and busy life. BUT this weekend, I will officially return to racing with the HRCA St. Patrick's Day 5K. Yep, that one, with the Gay Leprechaun t-shirt.

After my last year of running longer distances and consistently running the biggest hills in Highlands Ranch, this race is going to look a lot different for me than it did last year. My memories of this race were a bit hazy, but I remember thinking that the hill toward the end was pretty nasty. Well, tonight I met up with a few other running buddies to run the race course, so that we'd all be familiar with it Saturday. (After being 65 for the last few days, it is predicted to snow 5-10 inches tonight/tomorrow, so there is no telling what that course will be like Saturday morning.) I've had a head cold for the past couple days, but popped some Dayquil this afternoon and was ready to run at 6:30. We had one novice runner with us, and all just took it easy and had a nice chatty, social run. I've gotta say, my perspective has completely changed in the last year; that hill was nothing. Like, seriously nothing. It is probably one of the easier race courses in the HRCA races. Weather permitting, I might have a speedy race Saturday...and the fugly Gay Leprechaun t-shirt to show for it.

HRCA Shirts: Fugly Revealed!

Now, I realize there are shirts waaaaaaayyyy more fugly out there than these, but for those who cared to see, these are the 2009 HRCA race shirts that I think are just gross. True, they are all spelled correctly and yes, I have seen worse clipart in my time...but because it's my hood, I have special pride in these Highlands Ranch Run Series shirts. I want to feel proud wearing these around the greater Denver metro area. I want all those snooty Wash Park and Cheeseman Park runners to think, "Ah, maybe they have no yards and the houses are all soulless and beige down in the Ranch, but BY GOD they can make a nice race shirt!" And quite frankly, I think we can do much better here.

And oh yeah, for the running part, I did 8.5 miles* on Sunday in 1:19. My hammies were a little sore yesterday after the weekend, so I took the day off. Today I will be celebrating Cindo de Mayo by taking my act to Wash Park to show off the lovely new red HRCA Cinco shirt.

*I have noticed that my little Daily Mile calculator has not been calculating correctly the last couple of weeks...I will choose to believe this is because I have done so many miles that I've broken its will to calculate. So I am in search of a new simple blog calculating tool to tell me how much I am running so that I can continue to avoid all simple math for the forseeable future.