Runner Ross does a first 5k ever!

That's right. I ran a 5k race. I think a 50 mile bike race would have been more to my liking but what the heck, I'm branching out into other sports. I need to take about 4 or 5 minutes off my time to be in contention to win local 5k's in my age group. Yeah right. Maybe 2 minutes. Lets see, to break 20 minutes for a 5K the pace calculator says I would have to run 6:25 miles to break 20 minutes. That almost seems do-able, on paper at least. That's 1:36 a mile faster than I ran with virtually no training. Hummm, maybe, if I ran 4 miles 3 times a week for a month and a half,...and put in some speed work and kept up the cycling. We'll see. "We'll see" is mommy language for NO. I'll shoot for a 7:30 pace. That'll give me a more respectable 23:18. Make me remember this, my goal for the next 5k is: 23:30.

Sharon did a great job. 2nd place in her age group. She's been working lots of overtime and not training like she wishes yet she still ran faster than ANY of her training runs. She is that special type of athlete that can really shine on race day. Racing brings out her best. With a time of 26:12 she completed each of her 3 miles faster than any single mile she's run in training. I think that's incredible. That's 8:26 per mile pace and she's bee hard pressed to break 9 minutes in training.

When we got married we went to do the State Time Trial championship on our tandem. We got 4th which we were disappointed with. She had a great day and I had a bad day. Her max heart rate is about 185. Her lactate threshold is about 165. She rode 55 minutes with an average heart rate of 182!! Talk about getting UP for a race. Then we went to Ohio and spanked all the bike racers in her parents' hometown. They got Sharon riled up when the "warned" us not to go on their hilly ride on a tandem, we'd probably get dropped. It felt like I was on a motorcycle with all that power coming from the back seat. I've got a great wife, just don't piss her off on the bicycle, she's fast when she's pissed. Check out this video. The best bike racers in the world goofing it up.














Sharon's silver medal

Modest and cold