Believe it or not, I’ve never run a turkey trot! So being a momentous occasion, here is a great big long race report…for a 5k.
My husband, Ember (my daughter), and I parked my car, step out into the cold. It was 40’s degrees.
Anyway, we went to get me a bib and saw where start are, found the bathrooms, ran back to the start as I missed the beginning so I had to rush. Seriously, the pre-race anxiety is RIDICULOUS. My feet wouldn’t stop moving.
Do I look nervous? Anxious? Can’t see my face, haha 🙂
So anyway, finally we start, I dip and dodge people, despite only being 3 deep from the start line. My thought process went something like this:
(Runners set, GO) go go go go go go…and don’t trip on any one’s feet.
Holy cow, everyone are walking! I jumped on sidewalk and ran but realized I need to slows down. But I still running fast, slow dowwwwwn! Goal here is finish strong. Half of these people in front of you are totally going to crash and burn and slow down.
Then I went through that brief moment where you think “Holy crap, this is going to be HARD” and your breathing is labored, your legs start to burn. I slowed myself down then and felt much better. I started to fall into my zone.
Around the 0.5 mile slowly, I started picking off other runners, one by one. Mile 1: 12:58
I decided Mile 2 would be a bit more conservative. Still passing people. For each time my breathing would start to get a little crazy, I would take note, take a deep breath, and slow it down. Worked pretty well! Mile 2: 14:19
I was really feeling it now, so I told myself, hold back juuuust a little bit until you turn the corner, then give it all you have to the finish. Sounded like a great plan to me.
I rounded the corner, looked at finish line is coming pretty quickly….what gives? Do we run PAST it or something? I looked hard and noticed that no, that was infect the finish line, no sneaky tricks around it to get in more mileage. So I buckled down and sprinted the last few tenths of a mile. Noticed another girl was racing me to finish line!
44:07 clock time. So I HAD a good race, my first 5k run last month was 49 minutes and I got 5 minutes less! It was a fantastic, well run race, and a great course.
I am looking forward to another 5K with my time starting going down and hopefully it will be 40 minutes.
I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Running!
