My own Gold and Silver

Okay, I didn’t receive medals per say, but I did receive 1st and 2nd place in different events at the Moehring family reunion last week in Colorado.

The first one I am particularly proud of, the Moehring 5k.  My brother had an idea a year ago that we should have a 5k race at our family reunion.  He figured correctly, that for some of us in the family, particularly those who like to compete in athletics, it would be good motivation to exercise through the year.

That it was, I worked hard in preparation for this friendly family race.  My brother is a physical therapist who has always kept himself in pretty good shape.  His 9th grade son is a cross country runner, tall and skinny gazelle.  My other brother had been training for a marathon until an injury, and he lives at elevation in Fort Collins, so I thought he would be a challenger too.  Unfortunately his knee was not up for competition.

Anyway, first morning of the reunion, it was game on.  Unfortunately this was after two days of sitting in a car and eating fast food, but earlier the better so we could enjoy the rest of vacation.  I was worried about this run.  I’m not really a runner, and I hadn’t been training to run for quite some time because I’ve been doing Insanity 6 days a week with my coworkers.  Then there’s the hills, elevation, air quality due to recent Colorado Spring fires (which turned out to be great), I really didn’t know how I would perform on this run.

<-- Our nephew, Josh.

My brother picked out a 3 mile course, constant hills up and down.  I ran the course without seeing it in advance, but at least it looped back on itself so the latter half wasn’t a surprise.  My main concern was overrunning too early.  My excitement and anticipation could easy have caused me to spike my heart rate too early.  I ran my race according to my heart rate monitor, fortunately this was practically in-step with my nephew.  I don’t think he’s as good at pacing himself.  The 2nd half of the race I started pulling ahead a little, but it wasn’t till the last 1/4 on the long hill that I really started separating.  On a flat terrain I think my nephew might have beat me.  But thanks to my Insanity training, I had the cardio endurance and leg power to push through.  I won the race by 11 seconds with a so-so time of 25:02.  Not record breaking for a measly 3 miles, but considering that was my first athletic event at elevation and the meager running I had done leading up in the months prior, I was pleased with my run, and obviously I’m excited that I get to claim bragging rights until our next reunion!

My next motivational event will probably be the Tough Mudder in mid Februrary.  13 miles, 30 obstacles, and it sounds like Tough Mudder tries harder to make you uncomfortable than the Spartan Race does.  But it’ll be fun, and hopefully I will be running it with some people from church and/or work.

My silver came in a Canasta tournament.  My nephew was my partner in this event.   We played a good 3 matches.  We were in the lead going into the what we thought would be the last hand of the tournament.  Unfortunately we couldn’t close it out, and our opponents (my mom and brother) had a phenomenal hand, for a come from behind victory.  : (  That’s okay, something to look forward to next year.

We had a great time,
Nate