My first race is in the books!
BLUF - I finished and hit one goal and almost hit the other.
I woke up feeling refreshed and ready for the day. I had my usual breakfast of an Activia yogurt, banana, and cup of coffee.
The weather was all over the place. I walked outside in shorts and a tshirt, only to immediately walk back inside for a long sleeve tee. This worked well in the shade walking to the starting line, but was too much for the race. Oh well.
I was about an hour early and spent a while just walking back and forth moving my arms to both stay loose and stay warm. About 20 minutes before race time I started stretching for real and that's when I started to get hot. I thought about taking my long sleeve tee off, but I didn't have anywhere to put it and there wasn't time to go back to the car.
For just a moment at the start, with 600+ people crowded around me, I wondered why I was doing this and thought it would be so much nicer just on a sidewalk by myself. But I shook off my anxiety and claustrophobia as soon as the announcer shouted go!
I did not realize how busy the start of the race was going to be. For about the first 10 minutes I just took my time and tried to find my place within the pack. It opened up before we got to the first mile and I was able to find my cadence.
For the most part I was able to stick to my training pace (9 to 10.5 miles/min). I was able to run the whole first mile without walking, but after that the hills started to kick my butt. There were more than I was used to as well, so I feel like a walked maybe an extra time, but, the 30 second break is a nice recovery.
When I got to mile 2 I saw on my FitBit that I was just above 20 minutes. Earlier in the week, I had realized during a training run that had the slightest chance of running a sub 30 5k. I was a little off that pace, but still had a shot.
The last mile started as a slog. I didn't want to run too fast and burn myself out, so I kept checking my pace. It jusr kind of slowly crept along. And then, all of a sudden, I could see the last turn. The excitement started to build and I felt a spring in my step. As the finish line came into sight, I still had gas in the tank and so used it all up.
I finished with a time of 30:32. I just missed it!! Oh well, now I have a goal to beat
Overall, I was 179th out of 638 racers.
I felt pretty good, went through my usual stretches, grabbed a piece of pizza from the volunteers, and then, to celebrate, I went to McDonald's for breakfast. Yep, burned 600 calories and ate 1,000. Ha!
One in the books, many to go! 6 weeks until my 10k.
