My First Time


Get your heads out of the gutters, I'm not talking about THAT first time! No...this weekend I participated in another first: my first official 5k. That I paid for. That was sponsored by a corporation. That involved more than just me running in my neighborhood trying not to trip.

Yes, I finally completed an official 5k. I have been running for a few months now, leading up to a race that I was supposed to run in early March. But as running goes sometimes, I had bad shin splints that I was told would turn into a fracture if I didn't stop immediately. Friggin great.

So after recovering, I slowly trained and got myself back into form. And by form I mean just barely being able to run 5k, which unfortunately does not translate into physical form as one would hope.

Just a few minutes after beginning Saturday's race I quickly realized that the first half of the run (1.5 miles) would be TOTALLY UPHILL. That was a killer. Luckily, for all you brainiacs that have already figured it out, the last half of the race was completely downhill. Which was glorious.

A few observations from a running virgin's perspective:

1. DO NOT HAVE YOUR PICTURE TAKEN WHILE RUNNING. There is nothing flattering about bouncy parts and the look of pain written all over your bright red face.

2. People are freaky! There was this one woman in front of me who ran on her tippy toes for the entire 3.1 miles! Did she not see the other 381 people around her who were not on their tippy toes?

3. The race was a Cinco de Mayo thing, and tacos and beer were served after crossing the finish line. After running over 3 miles at 9am the last thing I wanted to see/smell was a big ass tub of ground beef.

4. Free Vitamin Water is a godsend.

5. My official time was 36:26. Not bad! Almost 100 people were slower than me!!!!

6. I am crazy enough to do this again. The act is painful, but the afterglow is the shit.

2 comments:

(Sometimes!) Serendipitous Girl said...

CONGRATULATIONS! That is a HUGE accomplishment!

Big Hair Envy said...

Congrats!! PLEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSE post a photo....I need to feel good about my non-running self this week;)