Run Jen Run

runner’s alley / red hook brewery 5K

Today I finished my first 5K race, and it was awesome. I don’t care that I had a less-than-stellar time, or that I had to walk for about 10 minutes (in small intervals of one or two minutes each) to keep going. I finished the race. And that’s all that matters. That and the joy of seeing the finish line:

Results
Chip Time: 37:56
Average Pace: 12:13 / mile
Overall Place: 1,716 of 1,958
Division Place: 287 of 312 in females 20-29
There’s a difference between the chip time and my gun time (39:24) because of the massive amount of runners in the race. There were 2,200 entrants this year, and since I knew I wasn’t a fast runner, I positioned myself toward the back of the pack:


But let’s back up a bit to the pre-race meals. I had penne with meat sauce for dinner last night and peanut butter on toast with sliced banana for breakfast this morning, with my usual cup of black tea. I know everyone recommends whole wheat toast, but I am and always will be a white bread kind of girl. Mmmm, carbs.


After breakfast this morning, I suited up in my running gear and put the Champion Chip timing sensor the race organizers gave us (we had to return it right after the race or pay $35) on my shoe. It’s the one laced up with the bow — the thing toward the bottom of my shoe is my Nike+ sensor, which creates all those lovely up-and-down graphs you see on this site.


When I started at the back of the crowd, I had to walk for about a minute before I could cross the mat to activate my Champion Chip:


See that guy in front of me with the green shirt, holding that little girl’s hand? He got number 1. Lucky! So about the walking: It was 68 degrees out, which isn’t too hot, but also isn’t quite cool enough for me. I was probably one of the few people carrying a water bottle in the race, but there was only one water station at the 1.5-mile mark, and I knew that wasn’t enough for me. I ran out of water around the two-mile mark.

It also didn’t help that a bunch of the people around me were walking, which made the little voice in my head tell me that of course I could walk too. “Just for a bit,” the voice said. And, as you’ll note in the graph below, I totally caved into it. I told myself it was more important to enjoy the race than to be one of those runners puking at the finish line because they pushed themselves way too hard. (And there were definitely pukers.)


Nike+ fastest pace per mile: 10:11 at three-mile mark

When I saw the finish line coming and my parents and brother waiting for me and cheering, I had a big grin on my face and I sped up. My dad was happy that he finally got to test out the sports motordrive function on his super-fancy camera. There are about five shots of me exactly identical to this one:


Here’s a shot a second before I crossed the finish line with the clock displaying the gun time, aka how long it took me to get there from when the starting gun went off.


There was a row of tents with all sorts of free food set up for the runners after the race, including wraps, a pasta salad, cookies, cheese and mini cupcakes. There was also free beer from Red Hook Brewery, one of the sponsors, but I decided to skip that. So that’s the recap! I’m going to leave you with one of my favorite photos from today, and I promise I will be running another 5K road race in the future.