Day 4 of 7

Seven days of black and white photos about me. No people. No explanations.

Mission accomplished!

I know I'm probably the only one who cares about the details of my 10K -- and to be honest, my only real interests were that I finished and that I had fun with my friends -- but I ran it in a lumbering-old-guy 1:20:01 at a lumbering-old-guy 12:46 pace. Which would qualify me for an award only if I were running against a legless vegetarian zombie. In any case, I had a blast, I crossed the finish line, I hung out with my lovely, rockstar friends when it was over ... mission accomplished!

I ran 6.2 miles for an Easy-Bake Medal?

Guess who is home from his race and just now realized that in all his hurry this morning to find his super-cool running glasses he totally drove to the race and back without his prescription glasses.

Guess who also just declared a winner for the ugliest race medal he's received in 27 years of running.

Lightning round! Guess who also desperately needs a shower and a nap.

Welcome to the club!

Congrats to my friend David his first race -- and on his first 10K, which is quite ambitious for a first race distance. My stubborn hyper-masculine pride won't let me say whether or not he beat me, so I won't even bring it up. Hey, look -- free bananas at the finish line!

I finished the 10K!

Then I needed a helper to figure out how to do this photo thing with sweaty fingers.

Mile 15 of the 10K!

#IThinkTheSignsAreMiscalibrated

Let's do this!

I'm about to run a 10K with these insanely nice, insanely talented theater friends. I've shared the stage with each one of them and I love that our friendships have bled over into the running world as well.

Packet pickup!

I wore the shirt from the very first race I ran to pick up my shirt and bib for tomorrow's race. Plus then I just took this really weird both-shirt selfie right in the middle of crowded NewBo. And nobody noticed. Nobody congratulated me for my clever continuity of wardrobe, nobody laughed at the fact that I'm taking group selfies with imaginary shirt-wearing friends and nobody even said "You seem remarkably well-preserved for your age; let me buy you an ice cream" -- even though I'm sitting remarkably well-preserved right in front of an ice cream shop as I type this. Rude.

I've been in bed all day with a monster headache

And I haven't accomplished anything I'd intended to do today -- like maybe go for a training run or something since I'm running a 10K in a week -- but my language geek book arrived this afternoon so you'll know where to find me serif you're looking for me.

3.37 miles right out of the gate!

So I've run this route that I mapped only in my head more times than I can remember, and I somehow convinced my lyin', gullible self that it was just under four miles. Now that NikePlus has humiliatingly debunked that once-sacred historical lie, at least I finally know I wasn't TOO off.

(And don't tell this to anyone I've implied to that I've been training outside, but this technically was my first run where I actually propelled myself through time and space on actual pavement; all my training so far this summer has been on an elliptical machine. I don't know why. It's just what I've been doing.)

Anyway, I just ran 3.37 miles at a 12:08 pace. Without stopping, which I don't normally count as good or bad since I've trained for all my half and full marathons with the Jeff Galloway run/walk training method. But for a first actual run I choose to see it as a good thing, seeing as how I'm running a 10K in two weeks. ACK!