Saturday, August 22, 2009

Love Your Body 5K


So I can finally cross off "run a 5K" from my bucket list. Today was my very first 5K race. I have been doing the C25K (couch to 5K) training for the past couple months. It slowly works your endurance up to doing a run the length of a 5k (3.1 miles). Becky asked me a couple weeks ago if I would be interested in doing this with her. I loved the idea but was a bit unsure if I would be up to it. Even during my training runs, I really have to push myself to go longer than 3 minutes at a time. But I decided that it sounded like fun, so sign me up!!!
We did the Wasatch Woman's Love Your Body. It was for women only, no boys allowed!! What a great one to start with. It took place at Sugarhouse Park. Becky had asked if my family was going to come and root me on. I didn't really think about it. I figured it would be boring for them to sit around for 15 minutes waiting for me to come along and go past them in a few seconds.
They had what they call Diva night the night before where we got to pick up our t-shirt and running number and even a timing device that we had attached to our shoes. Wow!!! A real race with real times!!!
So we got to the park this morning, they had a lady on top of a van helping us all do our stretches, then they called the 10k runners to the line and they headed off. We had to wait about 8 minutes for our turn. So we stood in our groups waiting for the release. When we were finally able to go, Becky and I were doing a nice smooth kind of slow pace. But it was perfect. I had my watch on just in case I needed to check my timing, but I tried to just listen to my music and not pay attention to the time. We made it to the 1st mile when I realized that we hadn't stopped once yet. We hit that first mile at just past 13 minutes. There were a lot of families that were not only cheering on their own runners, but everyone else, that really helped. Then as we started coming down a hill, I mentioned to Becky that it would have been nice if my family had come to cheer us on. She said I should just visualize them on the sides. But as we got to the bottom of the hill, I looked over to the water station and there they were!!!! My husband Will and daughter Jodi were standing there with our dog Carlie and cheered me on. It almost made me cry, but I was already getting sweat in my eyes, tears just would not work. So Becky and I trudged on!!! We only had to walk 3 times when we hit the hills on the 2nd lap, and they were only about 20 second walks. I was so proud of us!!! I have NEVER been able to run for that long before. When it was over, I felt like I could keep going. We promised that next year it would be the 10k we would be doing.
I finished 346 out of 741 runners for the 5k. I was 141 in my age group out of 288. My finish time was 36:50. WOOT WOOT!!!!