5K Wrapup

My 5K was today. It was AMAZING!

Let me start at the beginning. My fiance and I hada fight last weekend that we never did anything together, so this weekend was a "doing things together" extravaganza. On Saturday, we went to a wedding reception until 9pm, then a ham radio (he loves ham radio) event from 11pm-2:30am. My 5K started at 8:20am on Sunday with check in at 6:30-7:30am, in a town that was 2.5 hours away. So...where does sleep figure into that? It doesn't. (Bonus, we live in a different time zone than the 5K, so we actually had to leave 3.5 hours earlier than the sign in time...i.e. 3:30am).

I had made a promise to myself to break my PR of 37 and some change by just running as a hard as possible. However...I was running on maybe 2 hours of sleep once you figured in some car sleeping. I was pretty skeptical I was going to do anything good.

Factor in the torrential downpour of rain that we had starting at 4am, and I wasn't feeling like this was the race I had planned.

However, as we were all hanging out underneath a pavilion waiting for the start, I made a friend. Her name was Jessica, and she was concerned that she was going to come in last. I explained to her that she couldn't possibly come in last since I was running the race :). Her friend had made her sign up for the 5K, and after some different family problems, could no longer participate herself. Jessica said that she was too cheap to not run in a race she already paid for, so there she was! I myself didn't successfully peer pressure anyone into signing up for the race with me...so it was perfect!

Me and my new friend

With 10 minutes to go to the start of the race, the rain started to clear up to just a light sprinkling. It was about 60-64*F. In short, the weather was PERFECT. This was also my first chip timed event. We lined up and then *bang*! We were off!

Mile 1 was pretty easy. When I passed the marker I looked at my HRM...10 minutes flat! Holy crap, I'm going too fast I thought. I'll never keep up this pace. At mile 1.5 there was water, I walked for about 30 seconds to drink...then right back to running! Jessica told me that she was going to use me to pace her on the run at this point. That was pretty flattering...I've never been anything CLOSE to a pacer before.

Mile 2 came at 21 minutes. This is where the hills started. They weren't huge, but very rolling. My legs were burning as I was running up them, but I pushed through. I think all the stairclimbing I've been doing on my crosstraining days have REALLY helped me. I'm definitely continuing that.

Around mile 2.5 I looked at my watch. 27ish mins! That means If I just could finish my last 0.6 of a mile in less than 8 minutes, I would have a hold of my original non-sleep deprived goal! AHHH!!

The last thing you had to do was to complete a lap on the track. It was a really neat idea, because you got to watch everyone finish. Mile 3 came on the track, and I think it was somewhere around 32:45ish. I hauled ass for the last 0.1 and finished in....drumroll please...

33:29.77!!!!!!!!!!!

My best by four minutes! FOUR MINUTES!!


VICTORY!

I ran sub 11 mins/mile!! First time ever for a sustained amount of time!!!! I can't express how excited I am.

Based on my results from today, I should be able to run a sub 2:45 half marathon, which is what I've been going for. Really, I'd like to run a sub 2:30 half marathon, but I don't know if that's possible for me yet.

How'd everyone else's weekends go??




38/52 overall for females
94/113 over for both genders
5/8 for Age Group
10:48 mins/mile average