One Bad Ass Runner

 After my 10K where I surprised myself and ran faster than I thought I could at this moment, I set my sights on my next race, a 5K. I wanted to sign up for one before it gets too hot here in Indiana and since we had a couple of days where we hit 90F but still had days in the 30-50F range, I wasn't sure what race to sign up for, as I didn't want to risk having to run in 60F which to me feels like 100F now. Then we cooled down a bit and the race for the Choose to Move 5K was looking fine. I have run this race a couple of times before and this is where I tried and finally succeeded to break 30 minutes in the 5K once again (for reference, my PR is 24:07 but it's from 10+ years ago). In 2021, my fastest year in 5 years, I broke 30 minutes at this race and two weeks later ran a 2:36 half marathon (my fastest in 5 years). Then all turned to shit and I finished the Carmel Marathon in 2022 with a 6:15 and hardly any training due to the injuries and other menopause issues I mentioned

I've been struggling with a 2mm slower pace than even last year, some injuries until December, etc. I feel slow AF. Some runs outside have been 14-15mm, 13:30-14mm on the TM. I've been run/walking more often than not as I cannot run more than 1-2 minutes without walking. The menopause athlete groups says it happens to some of us, where the VO2 Max takes a dive, etc. In any event, I canceled my Carmel Half because of that, and decided the 10K was short enough that I could run it by fun or race it depending on what my coach says. My coach retired at the end of January and I thought of doing it myself but in the end, I hired another badass woman coach Caolan that I've known for years and that trains some of my running group friends (ladies). She started me at 4 days of running, low mileage, and no speedwork for 2-3 weeks. Then we started doing speedwork. It was nice to be able to train even at the slow paces without breaking again (never been injured as I have mentioned before