First 5K

I had the FUN and pleasure of running my first 5K with a bunch of friends from church. If you live in the Seattle area and do not have a church home, you should check out Blue Sky! It happens to be one of the coolest, awesomest churches I have ever been a part of!

Anyhow- I only got a little nervous about the race the morning of the race. I guess there wasn't any pressure because I had to interval run the race. My physical therapist wanted me to walk the event. But he knew that I wouldn't be able to contain myself and gave me the go-ahead to interval run. I ran 3 minutes and walked 1 minute through the whole 3.1 mile course.

The course was a combination of road, trail & grass. There was mostly trail, which I didn't mind so much except for the fact that I almost twisted my ankles a few times.

I (unlike some of my friends) thought the weather was perfect, sunny, warm (not too hot) and wonderful for running. It would have been brutal to run this course in the heat of the day yesterday. But at 8:30am I found it rather comfortable!

I shot out of the gate with a pretty good pace. I looked back at my friends a few times (the ones who were also interval running it, the ones who were not interval running it were well ahead of me!) When I stopped my initial 3 minute run and started walking they were a pretty good distance away, so I kept on keeping on. I did have a goal in mind. (Under 35 minutes.) But I had no idea if that was realistic or not.

This course was described as "rolling hills" and that is exactly what it was. The hills just so happened to fall on my running section of the interval. I walked many of the down hills. (Boo)

When I saw a sign that said "2" I thought "hmmm... if this is mile 2, then I am making pretty good time!" If this means I have 2 miles to go, then I am SLOW! Thankfully it meant that I only had 1.1 miles to go and my time was better then I anticipated! I made it in 33.32!

My goal for what should have been my first 5K in May was for 27 minutes. This will again become my goal for my next 5K which I hope to run either this winter or next spring.

And to note, my hip is feeling great today! I am surprised that it is holding up so well! I am very excited about the fact that it feels great and pray that this means I will be able to increase my intervals and mileage over the next few months!

Here's the crew! I am number 313 in the dark blue shirt. And in case you're an "Office" fan. My shirt has the following on it: (Which is totally appropriate for a day such as this day)

And here is the Blue Sky Team: