009. Run for the Health of it

This past weekend I completed race #9 of my career, and my first for this year. It was the Borgess Run For the Health of It! run in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I trained for about two weeks at the gym on the treadmill, so my goal was to simply FINISH the race.

Of course, I had nothing but issues leading up to the race itself.

One thing I was looking forward to about this race was that the 5k gives you a medal. In years past, they did not do medals for the 5k, so when I saw they added it, I decided to sign up (because we all know that’s the only way I’m ever “winning” a race is with a participation medal) (but I am running the same distance as first place, just slower, so don’t we all win anyway?).

The other thing I was excited about is that this race does customized bibs with your first name on them!

When I went to packet pickup the day before the race, they handed me my bib with the name Tehya on it. Apparently there had been a problem with printing and a lot of the 5k ones were wrong. So I got a new bib.. with no name on it. I guess that’s better than running with the WRONG name.

The night before the race, my Dexcom sensor was being funky. It was 3 weeks old, so I knew it was going to be a little weird, so I let it slide. I did a site change and went to bed.

The next morning I woke up to a 296 blood sugar and a TON of bubbles in the tubing. So at 5am I’m attempting a site change and pushing insulin and fluids to bring it down. Luckily we had a long drive and an even longer wait before my event.

It was a bit colder than I expected, so I ended up running with my jacket that I had planned on leaving with Allen. But I got to see my Twinner (Alli) in the morning, and I knew my coworker Lona was there somewhere too. This race is HUGE so I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t find her anywhere.

This race boasted their app and the live tracking it offered. Allen normally tracks my location via Apple’s Location Sharing on our iPhones. It normally runs about 1-2 minutes behind real time but is helpful in case I get injured or something happens. But since the race boasted about the tracking that is “the same app Boston uses!” he tracked me on there instead.

At the 1 mike mark, Allen texted me that I was averaging a 9:45 pace and to pace myself. That seemed REALLY fast to me, but I had just gone down a hill, so I shrugged it off. At the 1.5 mike mark, he texted that I only had 1 mile to go! I texted back “WTF, I’m only at 1.5 miles” and we realized then that the app tracking was horribly inaccurate. He switched back to our normal tracking instead.

The race itself was great! It was weird running with SO MANY people and a lot of them didn’t know runners etiquette so I got cut off a lot. The course was a blast. I knew we kept trending downhill and I knew we’d have to come back up eventually, and boy, that hill was a monster. It really helped to see SO MANY people there cheering everyone on, and the funny race signs too.

This was the first race where I actively tried to run based on how I felt rather than what the clock said. And I think it paid off! I finished a little less than 2 minutes slower than my all time record, pacing faster than most of my races last year, even deep into the season. I felt great, my blood sugar behaved, and I did it!

New City, New Possibilities

I haven’t posted in quite a while and there’s a good reason for that: we moved!

Allen got a new job back in October which took him from a 5 minute commute to 75 minute commute.

Plus, we were both born and raised in the same city. We were tired of the familiarity, limitations, and we were ready for a new adventure.

It took a bit of finagling with my work, but I was approved to work from home, wherever home may be…

So now we live in Indiana! Our new apartment is absolutely amazing and we love it so much! We even have a deck now… and a grill! That’s something we’ve both always wanted.

We are only 45 minutes from our old city, and 40 minutes from Allen’s work. If we would have gotten any closer to his job, we would have been living in the middle of nowhere, so our new city was a good compromise since there is so much to do here! We’ve been here for 2 months now and we are still in awe of all the restaurants, grocery stores, and even an affordable gym that are all within a short distance of our apartment. Plus we live close to a few friends so we’ve still got a little bit of familiarity and comfort here.

Speaking of gym, we signed up! There’s a Planet Fitness here, which is cheap enough to be totally worth it. Plus the murder rate in our new city is significantly higher than our old city, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable running around town by myself here 😉 I also joined the local Type One Run chapter although I’m not confident enough to run with them yet – maybe later this year!

I have a 5k this weekend and I’m aiming to do another 10k this year as well. And I’d like to learn how to use all the machines in the gym! I never pictured myself enjoying going to a gym when I did gym class as a freshman in high school, but so far, so good.

I am still loving my t:slim and using my Dexcom nearly all the time. Life is good!