Freedom 5K Recap

On Saturday, Sept 25, my husband and I ran a 5K race. My first "official" 5K. I completed two 5K's last year, but I'm not counting them. I did very little training for them, even less running during them and I landed my ass in physical therapy because of them. I called a do over. So, this year I trained, I stressed, and then I trained some more. Then I ran a 5K!


My mother and my inlaws took the boys to breakfast and then my husband and me at the starting line to watch the race. Here I am pre race. Don't let the sun fool you. We do live in the northwest, afterall. It was a chilly morning!

Hubby and I. He is truly my best friend and we do pretty much everything together ~ except run! I would love to run with him, but my man is a solo runner. It's nothing personal, he just can't stand to run "with" people. He offered to slow his pace and run the race with me, but I knew he'd be miserable so I told him from the get go that I look forward to doing lots of races with him, but I'll never ask him to run them "with" me. That's when he told me his goal was to beat me by 20 minutes. I love that man. No really, I do.

Ok, about the race. It was HILLY!! Holy Hell!! I knew there would be a fair amout of hills simply because of the area we were in, but Jeez La-weez!! The first mile was essentially straight up hill. I walked most of it. Once we crested that first hill I was good to go (or so I thought). I picked up the pace a bit and my legs felt great. Oh wait...another hill. That's ok, I was up for a scheduled walk break anyway. Another hill down, time to run. About eight mintues later another hill ~ holy crap! Walk break time. Ok, now it looks like we're going to have some regular old flat terrain. Praise henry, baby! I settled into a comfortable pace (read: slow) and was ready to cruise along. What is that? I whole gaggle of runners just standing there? There were no aid station on this race, so what the hell is going on? I reached the back up and it turns out the traffic marshallers were afraid to stop traffic. Wha?!? She said "well, we tried to stop the cars earlier, but they wouldn't stop, so we're making the runners stop until all of the cars go by." Another woman and I looked at each other and said "Screw this" and we ran out into the street. Guess what ~ the cars STOPPED! I know, right? Ya know what else happened? I ended up in front of that whole big pack of runners ~ SCORE! HA!

The rest of the race was fairly uneventful. A few ups and downs with the hills, but they managed to all fit nicely into my walk/run schedule.

The husband did finish quite a bit before me, but it wasn't 20 minutes! Here I am coming down the final stretch. The man by the bushes in the black is my Father in Law. The boy in the stripped shirt and jeans is boy #1, the blond in the black holding the back pack is my mom, the boy in the navy t shirt and jeans is boy #2 and that green arm near the bottom left corner of the picture is my Mother in Law. Hubby is behind the camera. I had my own little cheering section : )

There was one woman who pretty much power walked the whole race with a few short jogging jaunts. She was just a little behind me the whole race, but on one last killer uphill she did manage to pass me. She was literally only a few steps in front of me and I knew I would be able to pass her before the final downhill, then we turned the corner and saw my family. They started jumping up and down and cheering and it was awesome, but they also managed to super charge power walking woman and she took off!! Wham, she was suddenly about 15 yards ahead of me and we only had a tiny bit of the race left!!

Here I am right after the rockets lit under power walker woman. I never did catch her. She ended up finishing literally three steps in front of me. Ggrrr.....

Here I am at an all out sprint trying to catch up with that woman. Bummer. Oh well, at least I finished strong, right?

With my boys. I had made a joke the night before that my only goal was to not be last. Boy #2 ran right up to me and said "Mommy, Mommy, you weren't last!!!! Yay!!!" Love that kid.

My unofficial time (because they didn't post results and I had to go by my watch) was 41:37. The course was just shy of a full 5K ~ approx 3.069 miles. I was hoping for under 45 mins and I'm ecstatic with my performance!

I'm running another 5K on Oct 16 while I'm back in KY visiting family. The first mile is flat and the last two are all down hill. THAT's my kind of race!! LOL!