Sunday, November 8, 2009

Break from Racing

I took a couple of weekends off from racing in October. One was to attend the Shining Light on New England First Regional Iyengar Yoga Conference in Providence, RI.

It was really great. I was able to take classes from some of the leading Iyengar yoga teachers in the country. It was also the first time that I have taken yoga so intensively. The conference was for three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and each day we had three 2-hour yoga sessions. That's 6 hours of yoga per day! It was a wonderful conference, and I felt great afterward. (A bit sore, but really stretched and lengthened. I went for a 5k run in the middle of all the yoga sessions on Saturday, and it was the first time that I've ever run and NOTHING hurt at all. It was amazing!)

The following weekend we attended Scott & ML's wedding, which was beautiful. It was a lovely ceremony, and the bride and groom were both radiant. As usual, Geoff captured the moment wonderfully.
The following day, I went to Franklin Park with Geoff to cheer him on while he participated in the Franklin Park 5K, which is a cross-country running race. Those of you who know Geoff are saying, "What??!!??", because as we all know, Geoff doesn't like to run. However, he wanted to see if the fitness that he has gained from all his years of bicycle racing could translate into something else. He didn't even really train for this event, yet he finished 20th in his age group! He ran at an average pace of 7:16 and finished 188th overall (out of 356).

I am so very proud of him! Considering that when I ran the Komen 5K it was on a flat paved surface, and that I had trained for it for about 6 weeks, I did a personal best pace of 9:54. Geoff ran amazingly fast and this was a difficult race - they were running across fields, through mud, up and down hills, and on gravel paths. He was really great. I don't know if he'll keep running, but if he decides that he wants to, I think he'll be very, very good at it.

Nice job, Geoff!

For all my Franklin Park photos, go here.

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