While I am not a fan of virtual races, I will always do them to help support those that have supported me. Having received extensive JAWS (screen readins software) training from Donka, I was happy to run with them when asked.
As I am Visually Impaired, I need at least 1 guide when I race. I am ALWAYS looking for new ‘eyes’, so a guide-In-training also ran with me on Sunday. For the race, Kathy was my main guide and Dave was the guide-in-training. Kathy and I have run multiple times over the last couple months, which gave her a good idea of how to pace me for the race.
Sunday’s virtual 5K was my first Naperville Half/5K race. I had attempted to run the Half in 2016, but was unable to do so. I believe that unreasonable hurdles were put in place by the Race Director, so I ended up finding another race to run that fall.
We met as a group in Veterans Park in Naperville to run. We had 8 people of Team Donka show up to race together, in a socially distanced manner. Myself, Kathy, Dave and Jodi all ran while the rest of the group walked.
Over the last 5 years, I had run this section of the trail many times, so I was familiar with the course. We did have one minor ‘obstacle’ along the way in the form of a stop light. This added about a minute round trip as we waited for traffic.
In the past, my issues have been with pacing. In that I will end up running an extremently fast first mile and then be spent, positive splitting 2, 3 and 3.1. Over the last month, I have been focused on starting off slower and then negative splitting. While I don’t have the exact split times, I believe that I did accomplish that.
The route itself was mostly flat during the first section (start to first stop light) and then a lot of hills (first stoplight to second stpolight / turnaround point). Knowing that, I focused on keeping a steady pace out, knowing that a small part of the back would be a run/walk due to the hills. This is essentially how it all played out.
It was a really fun day, and we were fortunate to finish before it started raining. After the 5K, we added on another .4mi to satisfy a 3.5mi race I needed to do. I look forward to running with Team Donka again in 2021!
If you’d like to donate to Team Donka, you can do so here!
