Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Last month I wrote this post about get­ting moti­vated to enter an upcom­ing local 5K race through the woods of Cen­tral Florida.

The idea, which I got from Jason Ratledge, was to cre­ate pur­pose or goal behind my train­ing, to do it for some­thing more than just to be fit.  I’ve been look­ing for­ward to the event, and today was the day.

The alarm clock buzzer was too early at 6:00 AM (but it felt like 5:00 a.m. with the change to day­light sav­ings time), but I was quickly up and off to For­ever Florida for the race.  My wife came along for moral sup­port and to doc­u­ment the big day in pho­tographs.

Dri­ving 40 miles through predawn fog, we arrived to join over two hun­dred oth­ers gath­er­ing in the early morn­ing chill.  The mood was fes­tive despite the (for Florida) chilly weather.

Soon we were off through pas­tures, woods, and creeks on dirt roads and trails.  I paced myself, with the twin goals of not walk­ing and fin­ish­ing in less than 35 min­utes.  The course was slip­pery and uneven in some areas, and at least one run­ner ahead of me took a spill onto some cypress roots.  Ouch!

I man­aged to keep a steady pace and began to feel good about meet­ing my goals.

Actu­ally I felt good about every­thing — good about chal­leng­ing myself, good to be among other happy ath­letes of all shapes and sizes, and good to be in the great out­doors early in the morn­ing.  Var­i­ous obsta­cles were part of the race design and added to the fun.

Although I’m not very fast, I met my goals and still had some reserve for a “kick” at the end.

But, no one was more sur­prised than me when it turned out I that I had fin­ished third place in my age group.  Actu­ally, I wasn’t even check­ing the offi­cial results.

For­tu­nately my wife was check­ing or I would have left before receiv­ing my “medal” — the cov­eted “For­ever Florida Pinecone Cow’s Head” third place award.

All in all it was a lot of fun, and I will def­i­nitely do it again.  How about you?  I’d encour­age all of you to find some friends and an event in your areas and train with a pur­pose.

Regard­less of your final time, I promise that you too will enjoy the thrill of vic­tory.

The cov­eted For­ever Florida “Pinecone Cow’s Head.”