This is normally an in-person race and one that I ran last September. This race is like the sibling to the 10K St. Patrick’s Day race that I was supposed to run in March but was cancelled because of COVID. Since my registration for the 10K was deferred to next year, I also got a discount code for the halfway race. It cost me $7.20 to register, and I got a face mask—which I can always use.

The time span to do the virtual run was between September 12 and September 17. Because of how my life has been going lately, I haven’t had too much time to run so I was only able to run it once and had to submit that time, instead of running it twice within those five days and submitting my best time.

I took last Monday off and decided to do the run that morning. I ran my normal 5K route, one that I used for another virtual 5K in the spring, and told myself I’d be happy if I could run it in under 35 minutes. I’ve been running like once a week instead of my normal three, plus I sometimes get fall allergies form the ragweed and we had been getting some of the smoke from the west coast fires here in New England, so my asthma has been iffy.

I took my time and I did have to stop to walk a few times but I did the best I could. And ironically enough, I finished in exactly 35 minutes. I tried to push myself toward the end but I can only run so fast. I’ll take the 35 minutes; I knew I wasn’t going to be first but I also wasn’t last (I was 168 out of 217).

Virtual runs are just okay; I do miss the excitement of race day and being at the start line with all of the other runners. It’s sort of hard to get myself in “race mode” when I’m just jogging in my neighborhood. And to be honest, I’d rather stay home and read. But I didn’t spend a ridiculous amount of money on running sneakers for nothing last year.

I have one more virtual race in October; it’s going to be a 10K and 5K as part of the virtual Hartford Marathon. I haven’t run anything close to 6 miles since the beginning of July so we’ll see what happens.