Race for the Cure and marathon training

Val (age 14) and I ran the Race for the Cure 5Kyesterday.  The weather was beautiful, though a little warm for the run.  I didn't get a personal record (PR) but did well at 30:54 for the 3.1 miles.  I was the 14th survivor to pass the finish line.  Placing 14th sounds impressive when you consider there were 40,000+ participants.  However, I feel compelled to reveal that only 29 survivors were in the first wave of the run which is reserved for participants who pay an extra $5 for a timing chip.  So I was 14th out of 29.  Still . . . it's something to hang my pink visor on.

The best part of the race was the Facebook status my daughter posted along with a picture of us in front of the survivor trolly:

just ran with my mom in "Race for the cure" love you mom! im proud of u! and she got a rose for being a surviver of breast cancer :)

It means a lot that Val participated in this run to show her support for me. Although she is an excellent athlete, she does not run regularly; nor does she enjoy it. Competitive swimming is her primary sport.  She's also great at softball and volleyball but recently announced she will focus on just swimming and marching band in high school. 

Jason and Ken were at a baseball tournament during the race.  Val and I rushed home and were able to catch the second of Jason's three baseball games on Saturday.  Jason pitched that game, which was unusual since he usually plays third, first, or catcher.  He did very well pitching the first 3 or 4 innings and then switched places with the catcher.  His team won.  Overall in the tournament they won 4 games and lost 1.  Jason's team (Eastside Irish 11U) was pretty happy with that record this early in their season.

As for my sports, softball has just started, though Ken and I are not able to play every week due to our kids' schedules.  I played on Friday, though and our game ended in a tie.  Ken and I are not playing volleyball again until the fall.

My running has been slowing ramping up over the past few months.  I finally took the plunge and signed up for a full marathon.  In early October, I hope to be trained and ready to do the full 26.2 miles.  Currently, I'm running about 3 times per week, with two "short" runs (5-6 miles) and one long run on the weekend.  I'm up to 10 miles now in the long run.  To avoid injury, I'm increasing the long run by just 1 mile every two weeks.

Lymphedema is still causing my left hand to be slightly bigger than my right, though it's usually not very noticeable.  My left hand swells a bit more when I run in warm weather or when I do lots of work with my hands.  I wore the compression glove today for my 10 mile run, but I didn't wear it for the Race for the Cure since it was predicted to be about 60 degrees F when the race started.