Flexibility, I've Heard of It

Every so often, I run a 5k. By "every so often," I mean "about once a year." This one 5k is pretty much all the running I do, outside, of course, of the occasional Four Concourse Dash at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International. The rest of my exercise has been decidedly lower impact -walking, cycling, kayaking, wall-climbing, and the ever-so-important Biannual Headboard Toss (see below). So pretty much every time I do run, I'm a stiff, aching mess for quite some time afterward.

I ran in the Race for the Cure in Schenley Park on Sunday morning. My gun time was a respectable thirty-six minutes even, which worked out to 32:40 line to line. I did have to slow down to a walk to rest a bit after the second mile, which is better than usual; I tend to sprint off the line and gasp my way through the middle of the race; in last year's Great Race I ran a 7:45 first mile on the way to a 31:09 finish.

(In other words, a winter of indulging the Inner Fat Kid that started with quite excellent New Mexican food in Albuquerque last October and has not really let up since has added a minute thirty-one to my 5k time.)

And am I paying for it today. My hamstrings and calves have tightened up to the point I'm lucky I can touch my knees, much less my toes, and if my quads could talk, they'd be saying "take the elevator."