It’s Race Week!

It’s been a LONG, hot summer down here in Texas and I can’t believe it’s race week! It truly feels like I’ve been suffering in this heat forever. I read somewhere that we’ve had 131 days where the temperature was over 95. Even though I run early in the morning, the humidity serves as a reminder of the toasty weather. Fingers crossed for a mini cool front to get here before race day. I’m not expecting a drastic temperature change but less humidity would be a plus!

Like I mentioned in a blog post earlier this year I am training for a 5k. The initial idea was to aim to break my old PR however with the way the temps are and just life in general, I’m tweaking my goal a bit. See, life was way different when I got that PR back in 2018. Through running, I was dealing with heartbreak and grief. I was training for a marathon and it can be argued that I was overtraining. I had also lost a large amount of weight in a short amount of time which had a big effect on my performance. All I did was run which mean I was super duper lean.

Now fast forward to 4 years later and I’m at a different point in my life. My weekly mileage is different and my body composition is different. I am much more muscular than I was back then and I have a better relationship with training. At this point, I want to match the PR that I set back then. I want to prove to myself that you CAN be muscular and be fast. I’m tired of seeing people share dumb myths online when I have seen extremely fit and muscular athletes be speedy. I KNOW that I can be fast. I’ve done workouts where I’ve even surprised myself with the splits I’ve hit.

It’s race week and I’m definitely getting nervous but I’m also excited. I can’t wait to see how far I’ve come this summer. How each run out in the heat and humidity has prepared my body for this. I’m chasing a 26 minute 5k which won’t get me any age group wins or any fancy prizes but it will make me extremely happy. Even if I don’t reach my time goal, I’ll be extremely happy because I made it through training AND a strength cycle in the gym. I’ve worked very hard on my nutrition and have seen changes in my body. It’s race week and I can’t wait to see what happens on Saturday!

Do you have any races coming up this week?