For the past couple weeks I've been fighting a losing battle against an ankle sprain and shin splints in my right leg.  Even though everything feels fine while I run, I've decided to take the necessary time off from running to let it recover before it becomes something really serious that could jeopardize my first marathon.

On Friday I had decided that I wasn't going to do my long training run after the Rodes City Run 10k on Saturday, but I was still considering racing the 10k since I'm part of a team that's competing.  After a night of little sleep due to an on-setting sinus infection, I decided that I wouldn't be able to contribute to the team and that the best thing would be to sit this one out.  It was a tough decision, but I know it was for the best.

Since I didn't race, I chose to spectate and take photos of friends, and Lynn, near the finish line.  I really enjoyed just sitting on the sidelines, cheering on my friends and watching all the participants as they rounded the final turn.  There were two people in particular that really stood out though. 
The first guy was in a wheelchair, but not one of the fancy sport types.  This was a straight-out-of-the-hospital type and you could see that this guy was really having to work to get that chair to move, but he seemed to be too happy to just be out there participating to be concerned with how much effort that chair required.
The second guy was vision impaired and had a assistant running with him while holding his hand.  This was my first time seeing a vision impaired person in a road race.  I had seen two during the Louisville IronMan back in August, and let me tell you, that is some truly inspiring stuff.

So, even though I didn't get to race and fully support my team, I still had a great time.
Now I just have to get healed up and prepared for the 10-miler.  It's going to take a lot of work, but I'm going to try to beat Tom in this final race and help our team rankings.  He's had very close times this year to his times last year, so I need to plan on running a 1:06 in order to best him.  Definitely going to be a challenge; I'm looking forward to it though.

P.S. Congrats to Lynn for finishing her first 10k.
P.S.S. Congrats to Lynn for not pooing her new shorts in the race like someone else is rumored to have done.  Well, not Lynn's new shorts.  I'm assuming they belonged to said individual =/