Ran Like Hell!

I ran in my 5K this morning - the Run Like Hell.  It was so much fun! 

First, I dragged Davan out of bed and we rode down to the start:

 
Okay, actually, it wasn't that early and these two weren't that grumpy.  I made them pose for this picture.  The start wasn't until 9:00 for the 5K and, while that did make for a bit of an early Sunday morning (not weekday morning) for Davan, it wasn't that awful and Anthony was most definitely already up.

It was very nice of them both, though, to come support me and here's how they were really looking:

We got there plenty early so I'd have time to find the bike check in and use the porta-potty as necessary (it sadly was necessary), so we watched the 1/2 marathoners go by, the 10Kers start and the kid's run in it's entirety before I started.  It was fun, though, and not really that much time.

Here I am before I undressed down to my running clothes:

While I opted not to dress up, just running is enough of a challenge for me, I did wear my orange shirt to keep in the spirit of things.  There were a lot of people in costume, though.

Eventually, it was time to go.  I debated back and forth about wearing my MP3 player (I will certainly for longer runs, but I wasn't sure about this one), so you can see that I'm still messing with it when we started:

As happens with races, there was a lot of movement in the pack at the start.  Having been close to the starting line when we took off, I got passed quite a bit, but I also did some passing of my own.  And some of those who passed me early I passed later.  Many people had pacing issues.  Not I, though, well, at least not until the very, very end, but that's a story for after a couple miles.

I really enjoyed the run.  I certainly ran like hell the whole time, which is what I'd been planning.  My goal was to finish is 30 minutes or less with a roughly 10 minute mile pace throughout.  I did pretty well with this, although I was surprised by a hill in the first mile, having thought it was a flat course.  It wasn't a killer hill and I did fine with it, but that was my slowest mile at exactly a 10 minute mile pace.

I tried to pace myself on a few different people throughout, but there wasn't anyone that worked for the whole run.  Some ended up pulling ahead and others I passed, but it was still a lot of fun to run with other people.  About 2 miles in, the 1/2 marathon course and our course met up, so we got a whole influx of people then.  It was pretty crowded throughout the run.

I was feeling pretty whopped as we got close to finishing, but this song actually helped.  Yeah, I like Glee music.  Live with it.  Anyway, I was glad I was using the MP3 player at this point for sure!

Anthony and Davan were waiting and tried to get a couple of pictures, but it can be hard:

I'm the one in the orange, behind the guy in the dark clothes.

 This one I'm more obvious but a little blurry.  Oh well.

I was working so hard, having put it all out there at this point.  Then I went around the corner, expecting to see the finish right there, but it was a block away.  I kept running, but had no kick at all left, nothing to pull out, so I got passed quite a bit there at the very end.  Still, though, I made my goal with an official time of 29:15.  Who-hoo! 

I worked my way around to Anthony and Davan and got the victory pic:

We checked out the after run festival, got a little free food, I drank water at nearly every opportunity, and I got a little chiropractic care from a local chiropractic college student - the school had booth - who worked on my knee issues and gave me an exercise to do, so that was cool.

Then we rode home, I showered, played with my Garmin data and now it's time to eat the corn cakes Anthony has cooked up for us.  Yum!  I wasn't hungry right after the run, but now I'm starving, so I'm off to eat!