Joshua fought the battle of Jericho....

And the walls came tumbling down. The only word that comes to mind when I think about the Groundhog Day 10k I ran today is brutal. I felt good when we arrived at the stadium and when I went through my warm-ups but once we started the good feelings scrammed and were replaced by feelings of doubt and almost apathy. It was quiet alarming to be honest. I have never felt more unmotivated at the prospect of running before.
The race started at 0530 (that's 5:30am for those of you not familiar with the 24 hour clock) and there were maybe half as many people there as were present for the Reindeer 10k in December. I don't know who organized the race, but they should be shot, or at the very least horse-whipped, for instructing all the walkers to proceed to the FRONT of the group! What kind of brainiac thinks it's a good idea for a mass of runners to line up behind about fifty walkers on a track? The starter yelled, "Go!" and we were off! Not really. I had to basically walk to the first turn as I tried to weave my way through the mess of bodies. When I finally got a chance to start running I was immediately cut off by a girl who was completely oblivious to her surroundings and was aimlessly drifting from one lane to the next.
Luckily we only had to do 3/4 of a lap and then we were out on the streets. If any of you have been to the desert in the winter before you will know that it is pretty dark at night. This was the case here. There were so many people tripping over rocks or rolling their ankles I didn't even bother to count how many I saw. We weren't a block from the stadium when all motivation abandoned me. My body kept telling me to quit and my mind was ready to accept the idea. I checked my watch at least five times in the first seven and a half minutes but that realization did nothing to improve my mental situation.
I kept telling myself to just keep going for a little more, to reach the halfway point and see how I felt. When I finally did, I was cut off again (and this time given an elbow to the biceps) and wanted so badly to throw in the towel. I depressed a button on my watch and squinted to see the little blue-green numbers glaring up at me. Mocking me. My body was done but the race was only halfway done and my pace was nearly three minutes off my target time. I don't know at what point on the second loop of the 5k course (a sick, twisted idea concocted as an homage to the Bill Murray classic) I decided to finish; it might have been when I passed the stadium and the Siren-like call of the finish line so painfully close but not really close at all, but I promised myself I wouldn't give up. I mean, if I gave up on a 10k how was I going to convince myself to get through an entire marathon at a faster pace than I was now struggling with?
So I ran. And ran some more. Eventually I passed the guy and girl I had been drafting off of for the first four miles and slowly crept up to pick runners ahead of me off one by one. Then something strange happened. I started to get passed as well. What the deuce is this? I asked myself. I hate getting passed (one reason I tend to start these races towards the back portion of the middle of the pack). But I was only able to catch one of the guys who passed me. I crossed the finish line with the unimpressive time of 0:45:20, a minute slower than I ran it last month.
Ah well. At least I finished. I overcame my inner critic and broke through the wall of doubt that had threatened to unceremoniously flatten me and deal a significant blow to my confidence as a runner. Not bad for having been laid up for three and a half weeks before the race with a gimpy foot. There are six 5k's this month. We'll see how those go.