5k Race Report
Since I wrote n entire post about running, I figure it is about time for a report on how the race went. All in all, it went really well and I am satisfied. I ran a decent time, I finished, and it was a fun race. Between the 5k and the 10k race, 21,000 people completed a run. That is a whole lot of people!
My preparation up to the race wasn’t ideal, as the week before the race suddenly became very busy and stressful (more on that later). I had also been dealing with some sort of pain/injury in my right thigh that had me working out on the cross trainer/elliptical for about half of my workouts. Lot’s of excuses, but in the end, I hadn’t gone for a real run in about a week by race day.
It was a cold morning, but thankfully the rain held off and we all got to stay dry. The race started at 11:15 A.M. and my starting time was 11:31. They sent groups of 1000 people off every 4 minutes. Even though I was relatively early in the corrals, I still had to navigate around A LOT of people. By the 2k mark, a lot of people were walking and blocking the way. It was probably closer to a 5.1k or a 5.2k…
I started out way too fast, but it felt good so I went with it. By the 2k mark my legs were kind of on autopilot, but I knew I was going too fast, and I tried to slow down. Right around the 3k mark was a pretty big hill that caused the real slowdown: I had to stop and walk for about 20 seconds. Once I caught my breath I got annoyed by two girls walking very, very, slowly in front of me, and I resumed a jog. I figured that even though it was slow, it was still faster than walking. Somehow I maintained a decent pace and finished in 31:30.
I am happy with my time because I did it and I finished, and I had a good time. I am also happy because 2-3 months ago, I couldn’t even run 1-2 kms without stopping. However, this “race-pace” is about the pace of my moderate runs from 5 years ago.
I will be doing a women’s 5k on June 9th, but again, due to circumstances both within and beyond my control, my running hasn’t been so great these past 2 weeks since the race. If nothing else, I’ll view the race as a chance to run a nice scenic 5k, except this run will give me a t-shirt and a bag of sponsor gifts at the end.
