River Run 5k Race Report

Saturday morning I ran the River Run 5k.  I had high hopes of getting a new PR at this race.  I'm going to make you wait until the end for the time but I will say I had a 13 second PR. 

Here's how it all went down.  Saturday morning dawned bright and early at 6:30.  I slept terribly all night so I was pretty amazed that I jumped right on up at 6:30 without hesitating.  I picked up the packets the day before so I really didn't have to get down to the race until 7:30 but because I wanted to get in a really good warmup I got there at 7:10.  It was freezing with a temperature hoovering somewhere around 38/39 degrees.  I wore my bright pink running shorts, black t-shirt with my white arm warmers, my pink and gray Sacuony's.  I wanted to look cute for this PR. 

As my mom and I were walking down to the start of the race, we realized they had numbers on the concrete.  15-20/20-25 etc.  We figured out that those were predicted finishing times.  If you thought you would finish somewhere around 20 minutes you moved up front, closer to 30 minutes you got in the back.  It helped with the weaving around slower runners in the beginning of the race.  I positioned myself closer to the front of the 20-25 minute "corral".  There was a loud horn sound and we were off. 

I found a friend that can run closer to the time I wanted to finish, so I clung to his side for most of the race.  I didn't really look at my watch much but I do know the first mile and half we were running around 7:20 pace.  Right before we took the trail through the woods, I pulled away from my friend and just let my legs do the work.  He caught me right before the second mile and tried his hardest to get me to go faster because the lead female was in my sights and he wanted me to get her.  By that time I was hitting the 8:00 pace and just couldn't muster the energy to go faster. 

I ended up finishing with a time of 23:19, good enough for second place female overall and first place in my age group. 

I'm not going to lie, I was a little heartbroken at first because I really wanted to go sub 23 but after catching my breath and realizing that most of the people out there would be over the moon excited for a 23:19, I put a smile on my face and jogged back out on the course to run my mom in.

Angela :)