FuzzyCo

That's my Google Translate-fueled notion of my proposal for a Gerdes family motto—"Achievable Goals". You know me, I don't set myself lofty or grand goals to count something as a success. Like, I made a quick comedy video making fun of a pop-culture phenomenon and my goal was literally to get 100 views on YouTube. We're over 500 now, so that's a multi-success in my book. Boom. If I was aiming for 300,000 views or something, I'd be sadly disappointed. (Quick, someone go watch the first episode of Drunk Monkeys one more time to get it into triple digits.)

So, too, it's been with athletic endeavors. My goal with the first triathlon I ran was to finish, and for my second it was just to run it pain-free—the fact that I improved my time dramatically was an unsought bonus. I've been running 5Ks mostly just to set little way-points along my training path where I'd have to run (and, frankly, for cool t-shirts). But as I noticed that my times were usually hovering just above 32 minutes or so, I set my set a little goal: to run a chip-timed 5K in under 30 minutes. This is not a huge or unattainable goal. But for a couple of years it eluded me. I've run that fast on my own, according to my Nike+, and I'm pretty sure I ran the Race to Wrigley 5K last year in under 30 minutes, but I hadn't paid the extra $5 to get the timing chip. And between one thing and another my time in timed races just has stubbornly hovered above 30 mintues.

So last night Erica and I went over to the Terrapin 5K. It's a race that definitely falls into the cool shirt category. Erica's knee has been slowly getting better, but it's nowhere-near running-ready yet, so I had to run by myself. I put my headphones in, put on some Wugazi, and started Nike+ GPS as soon as the race started, which always means there's a few minutes of shuffling up to the actual start line to get everyone running.

Wugazi is stupid-good running music, the weather was gorgeous, and I got into a nice pace. Around the first mile marker, I realized that I was making pretty good time and so where I would usually slow into a walk at the half-way point water station, I instead barely slowed down enough to snatch a Gatorade out of a volunteer's hand. During the second half, I kept setting myself goals of people to either keep up with or pass. When I hit the 3-mile mark, I sprinted the last 1/8 mile, which I never do. As I crossed the finish line, the clock said 32 minutes or so, so the question was how long that shuffle from the start of the race until I actually crossed the start line took. I had to wait until the race results were posted this morning to find out that I did the 5K in:

29 minutes 10 seconds !

The rest of my results were:

Pace: 09 min 24 sec
Overall place: 1354 / ?
Place in Age Group: 107 / 179
Place in Sex: 796 / 1259

Whee! Next goal? I don't know, but something small, I'm sure.