Cam and Sue's Cancer Sucks 5k

I was so excited a few weeks back to see that there was going to be a 5k here in Nelsonville, the tiny town I live in, and the fact that it was a CANCER SUCKS benefit made it even better! So I signed up and was looking forward to running a race WITHOUT having to leave home at 6am to get there in time.....fastforward to this past week, and my body decides to get bronchitis. Well, I started feeling bad during my overnight shift on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday at work were both so busy that I was finally getting dinner at 9-10pm instead of normal times because I had constant prescreens, and I was sucking down cold medicine to try and keep my fever, chills, and cough under control....Why didn't I call off, you ask? Well, the way the Crisis Team is set up, if I need to take sick time, I have to be able to find someone to cover my shift. It was too busy to even make those phone calls to try to find coverage, and I didn't feel THAT bad after snowing myself with medicine, so I just plugged away.
So Friday night I had a fever of 101 when I got home from work, and decided that if I still had a fever Saturday morning I would not run (I know the "above the neck, run, below the neck, don't" wisdom, and it could have gone either way, since the bronchitis was just settling into my chest at that point)....So I checked my temp Saturday, and it was 96.7 (come to find out, the thermometer is broken, hahaha) so I decided to go for it!!
I could not have asked for better weather! It was cloudy, initially cool, and had a slight breeze, so it felt good! I only had a little bit of a cough and took some cold medicine before heading out to the site--a whole 5 miles from home (yes, I drove. I am not advanced enough to run the 5 miles there, then race, then make it back home without dying. Yet anyway...) There were about 300 people there, ranging from little kids to older adults, and one girl even brought her dog! All the money made was donated to Leukemia research, and I signed up to run in memory of a girl that passed away while we were in elementary school....

I'm in the green shorts, this is at the start

The course had one hill that was not too bad, and was about half run on the road and half on the bike path. I ran more than I walked, and felt a lot stronger than my first 5k (when I felt like I was dying almost the entire time!) My music choices for this race were different than normal--I decided to make a hard-rock mix of stuff from my favorite hair-metal bands growing up--a lot of Metallica, Skid Row, and (try not to laugh) Meatloaf (only from his Bat Outta Hell album, since I don't like anything he's done since then, haha). In retrospect, I could have added some Motley Crue, Poison, and Def Leppard to the mix, and probably will for future runs, but what I had worked...

Less than  a mile in, a second or two before my headband wore its way off my head!!

At the first mile, they told me I was at 12: something, which is good for me. The water stop was at mile two. And running in to finish, I missed what the time was (and it's not posted anywhere on the facebook page for the race) but I know they switched to 40 minutes shortly after I got through, so I know I knocked at least 1 minute off my time, likely about 2 minutes, since the first 5k I did the end of May (and about 10 minutes off of my Warrior Dash time)....I have no delusions that I'm a speed-ster, but I am awfully proud of myself for improving!

Coming into the finish line

The race was such a success that the family has already set a date for next year's run, which will be 'The Second Annual Cam and Sue's Cancer Sucks 5k.' So there's another local one to look forward to (and hopefully not have bronchitis for!!) And by then, who knows how much faster I'll be!!
Now I'll just settle in to ride out the illness so I can get back to working out, running, and having fun!!

--Marge