The race day plan was to drop Kara off at my mom's house around 8 and have Emily meet me at my mom's by 8:30. I was wide awake around 6:45 in the morning, turned my alarm off on my phone and laid back down.... and then I woke up, looked at the clock and realized it was 8! My mom lives 30 miles away from me, so yeah, I was running a little behind. I got ready real quick, woke Kara up and we were off. We ended up getting to my mom's around 8:50, luckily the race wasn't too far from her house. Emily and I took off, made it to the parking ramp around 9:30 and then had a nice 15 minute walk to the starting line.
There were a ton of people at the race, but we somehow we managed to run into Carly, Kathy, and Kathy's brother and cousin - it always amazes me that we are able to find our friends in the swarms of people at the starting line!
Emily and I pre-race:
Me, Carly and Kathy pre-race: I look like I just rolled out of bed...
Emily, Carly and I kept together throughout the race, Kathy bolted off and she was gone (she is crazy fast!). The air was cold, the temp was somewhere around 25-30. We really had no expectations for this run, none of us had trained for this distance, and I had previously only run this distance once... which was 2 days prior to the race. The last few months had been really difficult for me when it came to running, I had horrible shin splints in January, and had some really terrible runs in February - where I couldn't even run a quarter mile. It's so easy to get discouraged when training for a run, but you are not able to run.
We ran the first 1.3 miles straight and then took a quick walk break. They had flags posted for each kilometer, which was kind of nice, since a kilometer is less than a mile, so the flags came up quicker than if they had been mile markers. We alternated running/walking throughout the rest of the race, but overall did more running than walking. We hit the 5k mark right around 38 minutes, which is pretty average for us - I think it was about this point when we all got really hot, it's amazing how hot you can get when running in 25-30 degree weather. The course covered some of the same ground that was covered when we ran the Torchlight 5k back in July, we were reminded of the brutal 90 degree, super humid, ridiculously hot day when we ran that race... I would choose to run in the cold winter over the hot summer heat any day!
I was really worried that I would want to collapse at the 5k mark, I am always dragging my ass over the finish line at 5k's so I was really dreading the extra 1.25 miles we had to run. Amazingly we just kept on running! I was tracking our run using Runkeeper on my phone, it's really cool cause it will randomly tell you your distance, time and average pace - so I just listened for my little updates and we were pretty much pacing at 12 mins per mile, which is normal for us, and it was nice to hear that we were keeping on our pace and not falling behind. At the 4 mile mark we knew we were getting close to the end, I was so ready to take a walk break, but I knew I could push through - so we kept on running. It seemed like the finish line was nowhere ahead of us, we couldn't see it anywhere! When it finally came into view Emily and I both booked it to the end! Our official run time was 53:15, which I am very proud of!! Here is our race results from Runkeeper.
Here is us with our medals post-race. We Survived!!
A shot of my race number and medal:
And here is a shot of the hooded sweatshirt we got for running the race:
These are some typical comments we make while running:
- Why are we doing this?
- Whose idea was this?
- Why do people think running is fun?
- How do people really enjoy running?
- I hate people that make running look so effortless.
- Are we done yet!?
These are some typical comments we make after running (I think runner's high is to blame):
- OMG, that was awesome!
- We did so good!
- I am so proud of us!
- We totally kicked ass!
- Let's do another race
I think the next logical step in my future as a runner is to run a 10k (6.2 miles). Get in Gear has a 10k coming up on April 30th, the Get in Gear 5k was my first ever 5k, how perfect of a running anniversary would that be to go from a 5k to a 10k in a year? I still haven't signed up for Get in Gear... but I am considering running the 10k. I think a 10k wouldn't be so intimidating if I could consistently have good runs, but it's hard to have consistently good runs when you only run a few times a month. I am going to work on running more regularly, and I will keep you posted on my training and my decision to run the 10k!
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