No, not the football season, though that started recently and makes my husband ridiculously happy. Therefore I too kind of love it, and even watched an entire Packers game with him yesterday afternoon. It was kinda sweet, like old times, and thankfully they won!
Not Autumn, though first day of Fall is only one day away and there is - dare I say - the slightest hint of a whisper of cooler temps I feel in the early am and evenings lately, albeit still no relief from the Florida heat during the day.
Definitely not election season since we're well into that and I’m disinterested enough to not even really know when that officially begins, though of course I’ll vote against the tyrant-in-chief’s party, I’m not a monster. And I'm really enjoying the big F-you the press are giving him, banding together in show of solidarity by freezing him out after he revoked press credentials for several networks on Saturday, the moron.
But, I digress.
No, in fact, I’m talking about the start of the best thing of all: race season!!!
My 15k race completed yesterday morning down at beautiful Fort De Soto (first 15k done since 2024 because I deferred it last year), was basically “opening day” and it went better than I had hoped. I was actually sort of dreading it because I’m carrying a little more weight than my last race in March, I hadn’t really trained, and I knew it would be so so hot, had to get up at 5am and all the other things that still feel hard about these long-distance races, no matter how long I've been doing them.
Despite walking a bit more than I wanted (my goal always being to only walk the much-needed water stops), I ended up in 2nd place for my age group! OK sure, there were only about 180 in the race, and a whopping whole 5 of these runners in my old-lady age bracket, but still. I'm counting it! Got a little placard and a $10 gift cerificate to, you guessed it, a running store.
No one was more surprised at this result than me, and more importantly, I haven't had to wear knee braces since my last race of 2025, and heck I even forgot to wear compression tights I've been relying on for the past fews years, so maybe now don't need that assistance any more either. Just the ability to run pain-free or mostly, and feel strong for so many miles, sort of fired me up for the season, even though my next races aren’t until November. When I will have the strange schedule of two half-marathons happening on the same weekend, which I’ve never done before.
But I’ve got plenty of time to prepare and so now the only question in my mind is: I wonder what I could do, were I to actually train?
😀🌴😀
