I did it!!!!

(Sorry for the delay in my posting. . .we've been busy!)

Saturday was my 5K. Megan and Joe and the boys cam in Friday night and we didn't stay up too late talking and catching up knowing we had to be up early Saturday. I fell asleep Friday night and tossed and turned all night, to be honest I don't know if I actually slept! Before I knew it it was Saturday morning and that meant judgement day had come. We packed up the three boys and all bedecked in our race gear headed for down town. I had already picked up our racepacks so we were able to skip check-in and pick up our chips (official timing thingys). That left us about 10 minutes to mill about and stretch before the race began.

I was sooooo nervous! Literally I kept telling Megan that I thought I was going to vomit and like a good little coach she kept telling me that I would be fine and that before I knew it we would be running and fine. (Dammit I hate it when she is right!) So the race starts and first off is a hill! Thats not nice! But up up up we went and it wasn't bad, I have hills in my hood so its not like I've never run on one. So anyway up we go, then down we went, down a big hill (that we would have revisit later, oh boy did it suck!). Still doing well. I kept running, Megan tried to keep chatting with me as we went, but being that I am not in as good shape as she is, I didn't talk back much. :-) We made it through the first mile in 9:20! I've never run that fast! It was scary!

The second mile went a little slower as we had a few ups and downs to go over and I'm sad to say at one point during the second mile I did have to stop and power walk! Not stopping was on of my biggest goals, too bad I didn't factor in the hills. We made it to the turn around and started back the other direction. I was doing great until we got to the base of the big hill! It was right after a water station, I took a swig of my water, tossed my cup and looked up and for all it mattered I could have been staring at Mount Everest! That damn hill was STEEP!! I made it 3/4 of the way up before I about tossed my cookies in a bush! A bit more walking ensued, oops!

But once we made the turn off the big hill it was all down hill from there and we about sprinted to the finish. 5K in 40:50 seconds. Or so we thought. I had a few guys I work with running the 5K and one doing the 10K. When Matt finished the 10K he came by to talk to us and ask how I did. I told him I was a bit upset that my time was soo slow. Normally it takes me between 33 and 35 minutes to do a 5K, but I figured it was the hills that got me. NOPE! Apparently the 5K course was miss marked! We actually ran 6K! They had put the flag for the 5K turn around where the 10K turn around was, the 5K was supposed to turn around much sooner (so instead we ran 2 bonus hills, nice, right?) So Megan and I figure that our actual 5K time is closer to 32 minutes! :-) That I can live with!

All said and done I feel great! Two months ago I couldn't run more than 2 minutes straight, now I can do 30 minutes! My body is still paying the price in fractured shins, but I'm still moving and that's what matters. Megan thinks that now I'm going to jump on the half marathon bandwagon, I'm not ready for that yet, but I'll do another 5K this summer and I would like to do a 10. One step at a time right!?!

So in closing I just want to thank everyone who has supported me through this first race. There were days I didn't want to do this, days when I really wanted to quit, but you all kept me honest and for that I thank you! :-)

Love you!

DD