I wrote the following Sunday but the race was Saturday so forgive the references to yesterday as I posted this in a couple of places..... Well I ran my first 5k yesterday! The race was VERY challenging for me. I have not practiced any hills since I've started running and as luck would have it there was nothing but hills! The only flat place on the route was the parking lot we started and finished from. I basically watched my HR and ran my race. So this was a first annual race for this school. I'm guessing we had 50 runners. There was a nice layout of food and water. The race was up and down streets in a neighborhood and a full lap was 3.1 miles. The 10k runners ran the loop twice. There was a water station about a mile in and again it was very hilly. You would go up a hill for a few blocks and turn the corner and run down a hill for a few blocks and this continued the entire way till the final hill up to the finish. These guys had a lot of issues. I'm not sure if anyone knew how to orchestrate such an event. It's Sunday night and I still don't have my times and unfortunately I did not keep one myself. The worst part is I know I ran my best time ever but don't have anyway to know what that was. At the awards ceremony they were giving out awards for the 10k people but some 5k runners were getting called for having won the 10k. Then the 5k winners were in the wrong order so they had to figure all that out on the stage. Maybe they will get it together next year. In the end I learned a lot about a race and my race day jitters. That is the most valuable thing I'll take away from this besides practicing hills as part of my workout! If I get my time I'll post that. - Eckroll www.saveafatty.com |