kristina running

Hey there! So today I just wanted to take a few minutes to write about my upcoming 5K on May 12th. I’m anxious, excited and nervous to cross a starting line for the first time in almost exactly one year.

In fact this race last year was the last race I finished before I started seeing a doctor about exertional compartment syndrome. It’s The Color Run which is just a fun 5K that I’ve done a couple times now. It feels appropriate that it was my last race before I was diagnosed with compartment syndrome, and now it will be my first race back!

It’s not chip timed; it’s a fun run, which is exactly what I need. I have definitely forgotten what it’s like to pace myself in a race, so doing a Color Run will take some of that pressure off of me.

My A-Goal for this race is just to figure out what paces I should be running in my training this spring/early summer.

So far my coach has based my training paces off a 1-miler I did a few weeks ago in which I went “all out” and finished in just over 13 minutes. Since then I am sure my base fitness has improved a lot because all of the training paces prescribed feel super easy even on quality run (aka speed) days.

My coach and I agreed lately that I should do my quality runs based on effort rather than pace since I want to get something out of them, but I also want to figure out what my real running base is right now too. So, while this 5K isn’t chip timed of course it will be Garmin timed :).

Since my A-goal isn’t to finish in a specific time but rather to get a feel for pacing myself again while trying to do the best possible, I’m kind of at a loss for what to expect as a finishing time and I don’t want to guess.

I’ve decided to not set expectations for total time, but rather set all my goals based on other things. I want to:

• finish as fast as possible
• work on pacing
• not take any walking breaks
• have fun!

Having fun is the most important because I didn’t get surgery so that I could put pressure on myself to run X time or Y pace. I had the fasciotomies because I running gives me joy and I didn’t want to live without the happiness it brings me.

Of course a part of the joy includes training hard and seeing the result of that. PRing after a good training cycle is a high I’ll be chasing again soon, but it’s not one that I’m chasing this month. For now running is just for fun because I like to do it and because I can do it!!!!