Today I ran the 5K Donuts Dash at Colorado Runner at Washington Park in Denver, Colorado. Joining me on this adventure were my husband, Kris and my daughter, Ember. We arrived nicely, and then stood in line for bathroom! Then line of traffic to get into the park was unreal while we started to be prepared to start.
MILE ONE:
It was a little overcast, but in the 40’s…absolutely PERFECT weather for a 5k! We finally lined up, listened to the director talk for a bit, and the gun went off signaling the start. My initial goal was to finish within around 40 minutes. It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement of the start of a race. Maybe 50 yards I just realized how fast I was running, YIKES! I knew i better slow waaaaay down so I don’t crash. I slowed down to what felt to be a comfortable pace. A few minutes later I just realized I started run a little fast again….What? I felt like this might be bad news. I have learned the hard lesson too many times about going out too hard. But if it felt good…why stop now?
MILE TWO:
We hit the first turn around at the one mile mark. It was somewhat motivational to see that there weren’t TOO many people ahead of me. For the second mile I followed closely behind a dad and his 8 year old (I assumed) son. They were booking, and the kid was all over the road. He was complaining the whole way, but he was still running very fast. Around mile 1.5, I looked at lake how beautiful it is with full of gooses there then there was a water stop. I still maintained a pace and it felt I am running VERY fast for what I’ve been doing lately. My head started playing games with me. I didn’t need the water, but I started thinking about the appeal of wanting to stop (and having a reason to). The more I thought about it, the deeper/harder my breathing became and next thing you know, i was walking with a cup of water in my hand. DARN IT!!
MILE THREE:
I’m not going to lie, I struggled the last mile. The stopping to walk hurt my momentum and really messed with my mental game. I had to walk for a few seconds a few more times. I probably didn’t *have* to , but in my head I thought I did.
The last half mile of this race was killer. A straight away. I’m talking straight as an arrow straight away, i could SEE the finish line, half a mile away. If that doesn’t mess with your psyche i don’t know what will! I put my eyes to the ground…about a foot in front of my shoes, and just ran with everything I had. It made me a little dizzy and I couldn’t help but think “I hope I don’t pass out! ” But the alternative was seeing exactly how far I had to go, and at that moment I couldn’t deal with it.
Before I knew it, I looked up to see the finish line again and saw Ember on the side cheering and I was almost there. If I had anything left, anything at all, I would have sprinted to pass line to my daughter!
My time is about 43:48.
I obviously did end up going out too fast in the begin then 2nd and 3rd miles I slowed down. My legs felt great, I felt that THEY could go even faster, but my lungs were screaming at the end. I guess that will come with training, and a lot of pace work. 🙂 But, I made an almost 4 minute improvement from my last race 2 weeks ago. 4 minutes is huge! Training has been paying off, and I’m looking forward to getting more and more miles in each week. My next 5k race will be on Mother’s Day, and I’m hoping to have a nice, easy, steady pace. So I have five weeks training to do.
Guess what? Come back and find out what I am going to do on April 19th and I will make a LIVE video on Facebook Page at “Just A Deaf Mother”!
