Today, I ran in the Woodland Walahatchee 10K. My time was 1:06:23-11 seconds over my PR. It was overcast, about 80 degrees, no breeze, and HUMID. You almost had to cut a hole through the air to run through it! This was my first "small" (less than 500 participants) race ever and it was fun. I prefer the big ones but I liked this one in its own way.
The race course is an out and back on a relatively flat, no intersection country road. The support is at the 5k turnaround and at the 10k turnaround-water, Gatorade, and iced-water soaked sponges which were life savers!!!! The scenery was beautiful, very large pastures with grazing horses, cows and even the occasional goat. This was by far the most "suck it up" race that I have ever run, though, because of the weather and no support in the forms of bands/crowd/ other runners to talk to; there weren't that many of us that even did the 10k, most did the 5k so it was lonely toward the back of the pack on the long route. One thing that I'm very proud of is that on the way out, I took it very easy and on the way back in, I let my "competitive monster" out. I passed 9 people in the second half of the race, including one guy about 11 times according to him (he passed me 10 then couldn't keep up
which feels good to a slow guy).
It was a great way to start a weekend and I'm glad that I did it and will do it again next year. As a newbie to the endurance athletics world, I've really fallen in love with it. The fast folks are just as nice to the slow folks as they are to each other. The post-race celebration was just neat and fun in the sponsoring Church's fellowship hall, complete with homemade treats that were GOOD (especially the peach cobbler). This such a great community that we all belong to. Keep moving forward, y'all!!!!
GO! WISH Team GO! 
