Last-Minute 5-Mile Race

Last Saturday, almost on the spur of the moment, I decided to run in a 5-mile race here in my hometown. I had originally planned not to do it, since I'd been having calf tightness problems, in addition to the fact that I felt self-conscious about running in front of people I actually KNOW. But the weather was so beautiful heading into the weekend, and my calf was feeling much better after a few days of going down to the track for flat runs, so I said what the heck, and decided to go for it.
As Lara has described in her blog, it was a rolling course, particularly after the first mile. I live in a hillier part of town than this race was on, so the hills were not too bad for me, but I'm sure they were very noticeable to anyone who trains primarily on the flats. Anyway, I went out feeling pretty strong, waving to friends as we went through town, and was a little worried when that first flat mile went by in 10:25 - a sinking fear that I had started out too fast! Somehow, though, it just turned out to be one of those days when I was feeling pretty comfortable, so I was able to keep pushing it for the rest of the race. It was a LOONG straight shot to the finish line at the end of mile 5, and I was completely by myself at that point, but then towards the very end I saw and heard my family and some friends cheering for me, and that helped me finish with a bit of a kick. Overall time was 53:10. I can't seem to find a pace chart that goes higher than 10 minutes per mile pace, and I'm too lazy to do the math, so I'm not sure exactly what that works out to, but overall I was pleased. And my kids were excited to see me do it, and were having races with each other for the rest of the day, so it was nice to see that, too!
It's funny the things non-runners say to you, though. I was wandering around the farmers' market with my family after the race, and had a couple of people come up and ask weird things about the race. The strangest was one older guy who came up and said, "Well, did you win or lose?" I told him I certainly didn't win, and he said, "Well, what place did you come in?" I said I had no idea, that I had just run it for fun, and he looked at me like I was crazy and seemed a bit exasperated. I mean, sheesh! Oh, and speaking of winning and losing, my fast neighbor's husband (otherwise known as my REALLY fast neighbor) finished among the top 5 while pushing their twin toddlers in a babyjogger! He averaged sub-7-min. miles, including retracing his steps once or twice to retrieve one of the boys' dropped water bottles! Some people...
I haven't run since then (trip to D.C. yesterday for work got in the way) but will get out again tomorrow. And tonight or tomorrow I hope to spare a few minutes to catch up on blog-reading!