First 5k…I came, I saw, I did it!

I ran a 5k yesterday. It was my first one. Did I start out with a nice, easy run? Do I ever make things easy on myself? Nope. This was a trail run. Mud, gravel, weeds, grass, tree stumps and roots, and hills.  Oh, the hills.  And, now, a small shred of me is left on one of those hills. Yep. Biffed it around 1.5 miles. The guy running behind me couldn’t believe that I got up and kept running. He saw me after the race and asked again if I was ok. I honestly didn’t think it was THAT bad, but thanks to his reaction, I’m guessing it must have looked terrible from behind.

My coach is thrilled with this photo.

I have been ‘blessed’ with allergies to pretty much everything under the sun and asthma brought on by those durn-blasted things AND exercise, so I have never considered myself an athlete. My gym teacher in elementary school never liked me much (for various reasons) and thought I was always fake wheezing as I was sucking on my inhaler. While I’m not quite ready to call myself an athlete yet, I can feel myself getting there.  That is pretty awesome. And, I am pretty happy with how everything ended up yesterday.

I had a light strawberry kale soy protein smoothie 2.5 hours before the race (which was fortunately approved by my coach – after the fact). Loaded an awesome running mix onto my mP3 player, and warmed up a bit before the race. As the gun went off, I was WAY behind the start/finish line, but suffice it to say that there was at least 30 seconds between me and the start time due to a miscalculation on my part. Never mind. Lessons learned. Won’t happen again.

The run was tough, and I didn’t meet the 3/1 run/walk goal I set for myself, but I DID finish under my goal time. I am planning to train a bit harder for the next time (already looking online for another 5k) so I can see if I will better my time on more even terrain.  Looking forward to my training for the 13.1 this fall as well.

Huh….me, a runner.

Mrs. C will never believe it.

Advertisement