Braveheart 5K - First Race of 2011

This morning was our first race of 2011. I didn't want to go. I woke up early to take care of my parents' dogs and came home and crawled back in bed. I was really really hoping that Tim would say "Let's skip the race and stay home in our warm bed." Nope...he got up and got ready and so I decided to get it together and head out.

The Braveheart 5k-10k is a local race here in Logan, sponsored by the USU ROTC and the funds raised go to a local "need". The "need" this year was for a woman in my parents ward named Molly. Her son Mason was born with a congenital heart defect and as you can imagine, the costs are staggering. He's doing well and has had his second surgery and will be "cured" after his third surgery. Anyways, we thought it was a GREAT cause, which is why we decided to run.

We picked up Kyra and headed up to the university to get registered. I was overwhelmed with the number of runners and walkers who showed up. I'm guessing (from bib numbers) that there were about 500 participants which was awesome! There was some confusion at the start due to the number of people, but at 9:15 the 5k participants (that's us!) headed out.

Tim planned on staying with Kyra, who is not a runner, and told me to go ahead and run, so off I went. I got stuck around these super annoying college girls who were just whiny, so I sped up a bit and got past them. I didn't feel like I was pushing too hard and I was feeling good so I just kept up my pace. I skipped the water stop and kept plodding along. I looked at my watch and was trying to gauge how far I had run and how much further I had to go, but I had no idea what my pace was.

When I left this morning, I mentally set a goal to finish in under 36 minutes. I haven't been running much at all, except for a few runs in the past couple of weeks, so I was thinking that 12 min/mile would be a good pace. Boy was I surprised when I finished in 32:07! I can't believe that I did 11 min/miles and I probably should have/could have gone faster!

Once I crossed the finish line, I headed back out to find Tim and Kyra. I found Tim easily. He was about 6 minutes behind me. He told me to go and find Kyra and that she was far back. I kept running and running and was thinking "yikes, where is she?!" when I finally found her. I guess she had about 1.25 or so miles to go. I got her jogging for 1 minute intervals and then we found Tim. We could see the finish line and Kyra wanted to walk. I told her to catch the woman in the blue jacket ahead of her and beat her. All of the sudden, Ky had this burst of speed and off she went. I think her finish time was around 48 minutes.

After the race, we grabbed some super concentrated Gatorade...yummy! I also grabbed a slice of Great Harvest cinnamon bread and then it was time to head home to get ready for dog school. I'm so glad that Tim got me up to go to the race. I forgot how much I love racing. It was also a surprise to see that I'm not as out of shape as I thought. Now, I just have to get into better shape.

Racing is definitely not a bad way to kick off the weekend!

P.S. We forgot the camera this morning, so no pictures. Oh well...I'm sure there will be more races to come.