Charities Challenge Indoor Track Events

Sunday, December 7:

Charities Challenge indoor races at Bethel University in Arden Hills. What a wonderful time. We go and pay $25 ($16 if we remember to pre-register) and run as many races as we want. Or none. There is a 200m, 400m, 800m, and 1500m or one mile, depending on the day, all on the very nice, soft 200m track. In addition there is a judged race walk. I ran one heat of the 400m, but some people ran several races and, last year, one man ran almost every heat of every race.

I really went there to run around on the track, not to race. Nobody minds people doing their own thing so long as we make way for the racers, which is easy enough. So I ran five "warmup" miles before to my short race, two clockwise and three counter-clockwise. I have no idea how fast I ran those 40 laps, but it was good enough. Maybe next time I’ll run every race instead of those warmup miles, taking it fairly easy in all of the races except maybe the 200m or 400m.

Those indoor races are much more than just races. A time to do whatever I want on an indoor track, schmooze with friends, help as a lap counter for an event, log some miles, watch some good races by people who are VERY fast and some who are brand-new at running, and maybe set a PR at a distance that I never run in the summer. Further, my sweeties are right there doing the same. A very nice Sunday morning.

My 400m time was 1:30, to be compared with 1:16 in my best 400m last winter. That’s not good, but I wonder if I can do better it I don’t run five miles of "warmup" first. Maybe I’ll point to the last race in the winter series, train for the 400m distance a little bit, and see how well I can do.

Saturday, Dec 6:

St Croix Valley Runners. Today I was definitely the slowest. Dave took pity on me for a while, until I encouraged him to run on ahead. Tom and new Dave were already out of sight, finishing the standard 5-mile route several minutes ahead. I did take a modest shortcut, which may have reduced the distance by as much as two tenths of a mile, but that didn’t help a lot.

This was a difficult run for me, very hard work. Friend Dave was chatting away while we were running together, as I was gasping to say "yes" or "no." We had an inch and a half of new snow overnight, covering the entire route, so running was difficult. On top of that I just didn’t feel very energetic this morning. But we got through it, to run another day.

Time 45:33 for 4.8 miles, pace 9:29. It’ll have to do.



One of my favorite dinners: Canned wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon with yogurt and dill, organic broccoli with parmesan cheese, organic nectarine. To think I once disliked salmon.


Fruit bowl - particularly nice after a long run: Blueberries (underneath), pineapple, organic apple, mango, organic strawberries, organic low-fat yogurt, Dove dark chocolate.