Motivational Sneaker!

runninggirl I am not sure if you picked up on what I did there, but I replaced the P with a N to make the title related to running. I will admit that it is pretty lame but I racked my brain for a while for another title and couldn’t come up with anything else. Also, I should have done this entry Sunday or Monday while I was still on the high from my accomplishment, but alas here we are on Tuesday.

Anyways, enough with the rambling you say? How did the Army Run 5K race go, you ask? AWESOME!

It was 5:50am when the alarm went off but I was already awake for 10-20 minutes as I had a full night’s sleep and was anxious to get the morning on the go. It was unusual to wake up and have to turn a light on as it was still dark out – a combination of autumn arriving and me not having had to get up at such an early hour in a while. I got out of bed and had my usual pre-run breakfast of toast with Nutella and a banana, as well as starting to hydrate with the H2O. Having everything else ready the night before, it was a simple matter of donning my race outfit, making sure I looked pretty, and then I was heading out the door to meet Brent, Breanna, Lanny & Susan (Breanna’s folks) so we could all head downtown together. The early morning drive at 6:20 was quite interesting as it was pea-soup foggy out and I could barely see anything 20 feet in front of me. Not only that, but the car was reading 3 degrees out and so it wasn’t looking too great for a run. I guess it was a suburban fog because as soon as I reached town the fog was gone and it was a bright crisp day, with the car reading 6 degrees in the Westboro sun even. It still wasn’t warm though. Once everyone was ready we hopped on the bus and headed to the race downtown. We got off one stop early and once we rounded the corner we were met by the start line and the mass of people – 12,000 total participants, 5500 of which were for the 5K. There was some time to kill as we were early and so we walked around to keep warm, made post-race meeting plans and found John & Julie who were also running (Julie the 5K and John the half-marathon). Next thing I knew there was 10 minutes till the gun and it was time to take our places.

Brent and I had roughly the same target time, me wanting sub 26 minutes and him wanting to be with the 25 minute pace bunny, and so we headed to the appropriate corral. We were a little late getting there, but we squeezed our way through the fence and pushed our way into the crowd. The nice part was that it was a couple of degrees warmer in the crowd due to all the body heat, which was much appreciated as we listened to all the opening instructions and ramblings of the MC. Then the huge army gun went off behind us (getting your heart rate up a few beats on its own) and we were off… sort of. We were about mid-pack and so had to wait for everyone else in front of us to get going, and then we were off… sort of. The MC came on telling everyone to stop as some people at the front had fallen and were getting stepped on… not good! A few seconds later it appeared that everyone was back up and on their way and so we were finally running the race.

I had read that it was easy to get excited at the beginning of the race, with the adrenalin pumping, and start out too fast trying to keep pace with everyone around you. Sure enough, a couple of minutes from the start line I looked down at my watch and I was doing 12.8km/h when my normal pace is about 11.5-12.0km/h. Eek, I better slow down to make sure I finish the race without walking. However, there is one piece of motivation to keep a faster pace that I was not warned about on all the sites I visited – young, fit women in tight running shorts, and there were a lot of them! Not surprisingly, I would find that I was adjusting my pace according to what the scenery around me was running and every now and then I would glance down at my watch and realize that I had to either slow down or pick up the pace. The other thing I had to get used to, having run only by myself up until now, was dodging traffic. People would be 2-3 abreast and in the middle of the road and then would suddenly slow, causing me to have to shoulder check and then jump to the left or right just so I didn’t run into them. It was like I was driving a car. However, as the third and fourth kilometers came around, the crowd really started to thin and you didn’t have to worry about it as much. What I did have to worry about around kilometer four was twisting my ankle as a hole in the road escaped my detection and I almost went down.

Hey wait a second, the fourth kilometer and I am feeling great? Woohoo! Next thing I know there are people lined up along the sides of the road cheering everyone on, gates started to appear and there was the finish line! Holy crap! I am almost done. I kicked it into high gear for the last sprint, putting on a good show for the spectators of course, and crossed the finish line with the clock reading 26:30 I believe, which was race time (since the gun went off) and not my chip time (measured from when I crossed the start line). In all the excitement of finishing my first road race I had forgetting to stop my watch and so I really didn’t know what my personal time was, but I estimated that it was under 26 minutes. I lost track of the distance while on the run and actually had some more in the tank to give at the end and wished I had run a bit faster, but being my first race it was a learning process.

So what did I learn? I learned that I enjoy running, especially the camaraderie of running in such a large crowd. I learned that I am a better runner than I thought, having placed much better than I thought possible when I started this whole running thing a few months back. I learned that I can push myself even further than I have been. I learned that I want to do more road races and greater distances. I learned that women running in running shorts is motivation enough to get up early on a Sunday morning.

And finally, my official results…
Time: 25:44, 882 out of 5502 overall, 675 out of 2447 males, 134 out of 477 males 30-39 years old.

Not bad for my first time out! It looks like my next race will be in a couple of weeks on the Thanksgiving weekend – the Ottawa Fall Colours race in Cumberland on Oct 11th. I will decide this week if I am going to run it. If it is anything like this race was, it is going to be a blast!