And This is Why I’m Grateful for Virtual Races…

Here’s the thing: healthcare providers who work in a hospital have to work weekends. Oftentimes, the managers who work on scheduling these weekend shifts have to plan months in advance, which means their staff do, too. It’s impossible to avoid the inevitable disappointment of not being able to participate in something fun because of work. 

I worked on Saturday. When I chose this weekend, I looked at the spring race calendar, and Richmond’s favorite block party, the Sports Backers Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10k, was not on the books yet. So I rolled the dice on choosing my April Saturdays that still also worked around the Foot Levelers Blue Ridge Half Marathon. And as it worked out, one of the days I chose fell on race weekend for the Monument 10k. 

I had resigned myself to the fact that I would miss out on the party, so I didn’t register. As race day drew closer, I realized that there was still a virtual option! And while I couldn’t run in person, I could still run my 10th Monument 10k on my own. And so when one of my friends had a code for a free bib, I took it!

Even though I didn’t get to run on Saturday, I did get to spend some time on Friday evening at the expo. I volunteered at the Richmond Road Runners Club booth. We met so many runners! And completely ran out of the Spring issue of Miles and Minutes! I wrote 2 articles for this issue. I recycled my blog post about what it means to be an athlete and wrote a race recap for the Sweetheart 8k. I talked up another local run club in this article, #WeOffTheCouch, and they were also at the expo! I was excited that they had the copy of the magazine open at the booth. I’m glad I stopped to meet them!

I ran my virtual race on Sunday, the day after the real event. It was so hot! And for some reason, my almost 50 year old body has been delivering more than the average number of personal summers in the past few days, so that didn’t help my heat tolerance at all. In fact, the whole run was miserable. Even in the first mile, when I usually feel light, I felt anything but. I may as well have been running on Jupiter. Or at least pulling a parachute behind me! But, alas, I got it done. It was definitely a chipper. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. Some runs are like that, right? 

If you ran the Sports Backers Monument 10k, it truly looked like a blast! It’s wonderful to have the race in person once again. But I am extremely grateful that one vestige of the pandemic running scene remains, at least for now: the virtual option. 

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Let me just say that men have no idea how challenging it is to run through perimenopause. And the doctors, even my female ones, are like, eh. It’s just the way things are. Sigh. Anyone have any tips to help me out?

If you ran this race, I’d love to hear about your experience, whether you ran it in person or virtually like me!

As always, I hope you all are safe and healthy.