"Try Outs"

Today we had a "try out". Or at least, that's what it was in my mind. My 500k relay team was meeting up to do a short time trial run (option of 3.7k or 5.7k). I was so nervous. I signed up for the team back when I was all speedy (for me) and happy. Since then I've had a few health things going on that have dropped my speed right off.
As ridiculous as it was, I felt they would take one look at me in this race and recommend to me that I would be more suited to "support crew" than "runner" on the relay. Irrational? Yes. Was I still nervous? Yep.
I was tempted to do the 3.7k, but I felt the longer run would be a better test of my skills. Yes, my speed is slowly returning to what it was, but I still fade quite quickly on my runs.
I set myself a time goal of 33.00. Surely even in my state I could make 33.00 minutes?
One of my fellow runners encouraged me at the start. "It's a flat course," he promised.
Only my idea of flat and his idea of flat differed. The first km was uphill. At 18m elevation, it certainly was not a lot of uphill, but definitely more uphill than "flat". On the plus side, that meant a nice steady downhill at the end.
My legs were tired from training last night and maybe I should've warmed up ahead of time. But in my mind I equate "Saturday" with "slow run" rather than "race". The group peeled away quite quickly. I was worried I would get lost but fortunately there were people of all speeds and I always had someone to follow. Besides which, it was a fairly a straight course, following the twisty suburban streets as faithfully as possible. Some parts felt really easy and cruisey, other parts it was so hard not to stop. At around the 4k mark a large rock got caught under my shoe and I did have to stop for about 5 seconds to peel it out before I could continue running.
It was raining - but only very lightly. I came through as the timer yelled out my time...under 33 minutes, thank you! Maybe not a great time. Definitely not a time that anyone would have cared about. And yet I was so grateful, because it was a time that I cared about. I cared because it made me feel that I'm not a labrador sitting in a room full of greyhounds.

Total time: 31.44min
Total distance: 5.63km
Total elevation: 28m
Average pace: 5.38min/km