A few weeks ago my friend Jen said she was going to run the K-State Homecoming 5K last Sunday. It was a week after the KC 1/2, so I decided to tag along with her. Any chance to run a race with friends, I'm in! Jen is just getting into running and has run one 5K about a month ago. I really wanted to try to help get her into the finish with a time she would be super proud of. But ugh, I got sick and was home from work for a few days....so I didn't really know if I'd even be up to it.
I made it on Sunday morning, Penny joined in, Jen had her friend Shannon with us, and our other running friend Kathy joined us as well! Here we are pre-race:
We were quite the team! I still wasn't 100% - had a cough like I smoke 3 packs a day and knew there would be some heinous spitting involved.
Penny was starting to get sick too with some congestion coming on, so she wasn't quite her normal self.
Kathy was having some back issues, so she wasn't feeling her best.
Jen felt as though she could hurl at any second from being nervous.
Shannon's the only one who didn't have anything going on .... or at least she didn't say so. But you know, I just met her so she probably didn't want to come right on out with it (as if she could get a word in between all of us chit,chit, chittering) I'm a talker anyway - but throw in excitement and nerves - good luck shutting me up.
But it turned into a whole group of us excited to run on a beautiful Sunday morning, and none of our 'issues' carried over after the gun went off.
I love race day. I mean really, really alot. All the excitement & nervousness - ahhhhh .... you can just smell it in the air. I was nervous. It's a 5K - done that many of times. But I *kinda* promised we could get Jen into the finish at 35 minutes and I wanted her to do it without walking. At all. I had no doubt that we could do the 35 minutes. But I'm pretty famous for going out way too fast. We were sticking together and I really didn't want to do that the group.
Yeah, I did that to the group. Well not just me, but we all started out a bit too fast. Got to mile 1 and we were at 10 minutes. Ooops. I was suppose to go 11 minute miles. Dang it. Slooooooow down. Geez. Sorry girls!
The upside to that is Jen has never run a 10 minute mile before and I'm not sure she thought she could run that fast. But yep, she did :)
Mile 2 we could take it nice and easy, calm down some since we had some extra time in the bank. After about 2.5 .... gravy. Downhill all the way to the finish, coming into the stadium for the finish chute. Kicked it in at the end and came in at 34:27ish. Coolio.
Here we are bringin' it on home
In the end it all worked out, Jen did a fantastic job as did the rest of our ladies! Had a great morning with only a small exception - this race didn't have age group placings darn it! It was mostly college students so our group having several of us that are *uh hum* a tiny bit older than that - we thought we might actually take home some age group awards. Eh, oh well. We had a great time and that's what really counts. :)
No races for me on the schedule until Gobbler Grind 1/2 in November. Time to kick up the training this week, then taper town again!
