It was 94 degrees on Wednesday in NYC. All you could hear in the news was “stay indoors”, “weather alert”, “don’t go out to exercise”, “find refuge from the heat”, “seek shade”, “air alert”, and people freaking out and running for their lives…What did I do? a 5K of course!!!! Someone told me on Saturday at the track meet about these Wednesday’s 5Ks and I said I’d be there. I told my two friends who live close to come along. By Wednesday morning I thought they’d cancel the race. By noon, I was wondering if we were mental, and hoping one of my friends suggested we went out for food instead. At 5, I headed out, ah, why not? It was brutally hot but I prefer this weather to the sub20degrees winter we had. Hands down!!! Had some coffee on the way, lots of nuun, and we showed up at the park where people seemed excited. ???. I was scared and not excited. It was seriously insanely hot weather for a 5K. And 5Ks are horribly hard for me even in perfect 43 degree weather to start with.  

A few minutes later, we are off. There’s a big hill, and luckily JUST ONE, in Prospect Park but I wasn’t sure where it would come up on the race. I felt like we were going up a hill as soon as we started and sorted ourselves out, but I wasn’t sure… I see a PPTC female runner up ahead and I knew it was Maggie, a runner my friend Coco described “the real fast one in our team“… uhm… I will definitely NOT follow her or I’ll be toast soon… Still, she was right there and as we’re going up the hill a biker was counting up the women and pointed at Maggie and shouted “you’re fourth”. HA, I guess I am fifth then. I figured I “could try” to keep track of how many women passed me…? We kept going and we thinned out. But I see a girl in white right behind me for a while. On my left. Then on my right. She’s trying to stay with me but obviously she’s not running the tangents. At one point, she almost tripped me as I am following the tangents and she’s way too close. She probably thought I was trying to block her and screamed “Come on!!!” furiously. I said “I am sorry, I am running the tangents”. And having Maggie right up ahead really helped as she runs this park all the time and is more familiar with it, she was running perfect tangents and I was mimicking her steps!!! The runner in white passes me and I shout “Good job, go for it!!”. I was mostly relieved that she wasn’t in my @ss anymore and upset at my constant moving. Good for her, I didn’t have enough in me for a surge with still almost a mile and a half to go. The problem was, she didn’t have it either and soon dropped; I felt bad passing her, as she seemed really determined to push. But then, I had no one to chase and no one chasing me, and got bored and tired soon. I just barely tried to hold on, two more songs, one more song…Mile 1: 7:06 (that’s where the hill was apparently)Mile 2: 6:58Mile 3: 7:22 (lost all interest in racing! haha)Point 1: 224 seconds (almost walking, it’s a 7:47 pace)
Finish time: 21:52It’s an 11 second PR from my last 5K in March, but in that heat it’s a FABULOUS time. Actually, it was fabulous that I didn’t quit after half a mile or that I even showed up!!!! I then waited on the chute for the runner in white, I figured she’d be coming along right behind me. It took a while and when she came along she couldn’t stay upright, I had to hold her up, she threw up a little and couldn’t talk. We called 911. I felt really really really bad. She seemed to be ok after a while, as I saw her walking away… not sure though what was happening. 
After a little bit we had an awards ceremony. I was the 5th woman overall and 1st in the 30 to 39 Age Group, which got me either arm warmers or a headband. The most amazing thing is that this was my friend G’s first race ever and she came in 7th in my same Age Group!! So happy for her! 
I was dripping sweat for hours after, but so super happy! Everybody else was hiding in the air conditioned air and we were totally sweaty and BA!!
Mini10K tomorrow, let’s see if it’s possible to recover the legs from a 5K to a 10K in two days. They’re majorly sore today… Whatever, right?

PPTC (midweek) 5K RR: HOT HOT + another 1st!!!