I ran another 5K race on Sunday, and this time, it was an real race that was timed and everything! The other two I’ve done recently were mostly just “fun runs” and weren’t timed. This was the Hot Chocolate 5K (there was also a 15K option), and my main motivation for registering for it was the really nice sweatshirt that came in the goodie bag! Not the greatest reason for running a race, but whatever it takes, right? My friend Ashley was doing it, and I had heard from a few others that it was a fun race. You get a big cup of hot chocolate and some chocolate fondue at the end too, and chocolate is always a good incentive! We’ve had some cold (ok, not cold to most of you freezing up north right now, but cold for us) temperatures the last couple days, and the forecast for the morning of the race was in the 30s. We were supposed to be there around 6:15 (no reason we needed to be there that early), so we bundled up in quite a few layers. I had on cold weather leggings, leg warmers, and 4 different thin layers of shirts. Luckily for all of us, there were clouds overnight on Saturday, so it never did get that cold. It was in the 50s when we got to the race location. By about .5 miles, I was already feeling pretty warm.
Ashley and I were both in corral A, so were pretty close to the front of the starting line.
Ready to run!
I felt great the whole time I was running! I was actually amazed at how quickly it seemed to go—before I knew it, it was over and I was crossing the finish line! Since we were towards the front of the pack, there weren’t too many finishers mingling around, and we didn’t even have to wait in line to get our picture taken on the finishers podium (by the time we left, the line was super long!). I’ll have to see where I need to go to find the official race pictures.
It ended up being a beautiful morning for a race. The sun came up and it warmed up nicely.
So much more fun to run with friends! Thanks Ashley for motivating me to run!
So, here’s the most impressive part about this whole thing. In my first ever timed race, I ran a 8:27 pace, finishing 3.1 miles in 26 minutes, 14 seconds. That is definitely the fastest I’ve ever ran! I was 13th out of 328 people in my age division (30-34), and 192nd place overall out of 3390 people. I’d say that’s not a bad first race! It was a really fun morning, and I look forward to more races like this. Many thanks to my mom for coming over to our house at 6:30 in the morning since I had this race and Dave was golfing. It sure is great having Grandma Jean here again!
