I have a hard time remembering what I ate for dinner last night, but 24:03 is still hanging around there in my subconscious. It’s my 5K PR from my high school cross country days. I even remember it was junior year, at an away meet at Alvirne HS in Hudson, NH. I really feel like I would have been able to bring that down another few minutes my senior year. Maybe even become a scoring runner! But unfortunately, I tore my ACL during basketball season of my junior year. My knee rehab didn’t even end until June, and cross country started in August. To top it off, I had to run the whole year with a giant carbon fiber knee brace. To say that my times never approached 24:03 in my senior year would be an understatement.
Why is 24:03 on my mind right now? Well, I just finished my second week of the Couch to 5K program and I think that I am going to sign up for the Great Bay 5K even though I don’t know if I will be done the program by then. I have a lot of weight to lose, and a lot of years of non-running to make up for, and I find myself just hoping that in a little less than 2 months, I’ll at least be able to beat the 54:51 time of the last place finisher last year. I’ll try to ignore the fact that it was a 4 year old girl.