WILDCAT 5K

Wooo woooo  here comes the full report of my first 5k of the season.  As I posted in my last blog post I spent the night before getting prepped for the event.  Clothing laid out, mp3 player charged, children's clothing laid out, and I even purchased breakfast for the children so I would not have to scramble to cook something in the morning. (doughnuts, which made me the coolest mom ever)  I had accounted for everything and was all set to go...

 I arrived there with my friend Stacey and quickly went to pick up our race packets.   Once that was done we had about 30 min to pin on our bibs, warm up, hit the rest rooms and of course get a pre race pic. of ourselves taken.



Stacey and myself before the race

I found out about the race through my physical therapist.  She too ran it along with a whole slew of other staff members from my physical therapy place.  I was also approached by a woman named Laura who recognized me from a mutual friend.  I was already super nervous and knowing so many people there made the nervousness 10 times worse.  Kinda reminded me of how much I like to sing and how I have no problem singing in front of strangers but if you ask me to sign in front of people I know... I get all freaked out.   Standing at the starting line I felt like I was standing in front of family and friends with a microphone in my hand.

The guy who was in charge of starting the race had no gun so he yelled POW and we were off.  I started off in the middle of the pack but it did not take long before I was in the back of the pack.  I have been following the Jeff Galloway run/walk program so I kept close eye on my watch and planned on walking 1 min. for every 6 min of running.  The first walk break came and I was actually in need of it.  I was kinda out of breath at this point already which told me I was running faster then I should have been.  When I started back up again I tried to slow down a bit but seeing the gap between myself and the people in front of me grow larger and larger made me question my pace and I started to run faster.  There was supposed to be someone at what I thought was the 1mile and 2 mile mark telling you what your pace was.   I got to the first person and they shouted out 7minuets (I do not remember what the seconds count was).   I knew there was no possible way that I could be running at that pace.  I have only run a mile in under 8 min once and that was because I was acting overly competitive.  I ran it on the treadmill and I had to hold on to the bars for dear life, if I had accidentally let go I would have gone flying off.  hahah  Trust me when I say there was no possible way for me to do that again without the aid of the treadmill.   So once I hear the 7 min call my mind starts to wonder a bit... what?  Where am I, was that not the one mile mark?  Wait my watch says it has been 10 min.  but still I do not run 10 min miles either.  Crap how far have I run?   Having never run the course before I just had to try to clear my mind and not worry about how far I had run or how far I had to go.  I did find comfort though in the fact that although she was quite a distance ahead of me I could still see Stacey and she seemed to be doing well!

The first part of the course took us through a neighborhood and that was kinda fun because there were several people standing outside in their drive ways to watch us.  The second part was down a sidewalk which was right between the main rd and a lake.  I focused on looking straight ahead but I made sure to take in some of the view of the lake too.  I finally came to the second person who was shouting out times and was told I was at 21something.   At this point in time I am feeling confident that, that was in fact the 2 mile mark.  Which meant that I was trucking!  Only at this point in time I could not think about that.  I had to focus now on how much I was walking because unfortunately at this point in time I was needing to walk every 4 to 5 min instead of 6.   There was a couple that had been running near me the whole race and we were kinda laughing at each other because I would run while they were walking and pass them then when I would walk they would run past me.  We leap frogged the whole race. 

The last stretch of the race was the drive way to the middle school and onto the middle school's brand new track.  Right when I saw that track I knew this was it I was in the home stretch.  Only one lap around the track and boom the race would be over.  My adrenaline started pumping and I started to push it into gear.  I got onto that track and I instantly could smell the rubber or whatever it is made out of.   It reminded me of getting a new car and how much you enjoy that new car smell, not so much because of how good the smell is but because of what it represents... the shinny, clean, new car!   I enjoyed the smell of the track not because I like to sniff rubber but because it meant I had done it and was just about to cross the finish line.  I got half way around that track when the sent was no longer a thought in my mind, all I could think about was I can't breath!  I wanted so bad to sprint the whole way around the track but I just was not able to do it.  I had to slow down and then eventually walk at which time the couple I had been leap frogging passed me.  Feeling a little defeated and upset with myself, a friend from my running moms group on facebook came into my head.  Although I have never met Denise nor do I know her that well at all she came into my mind at that moment.  I thought about how Denise who started running at 39 years old, she has CLL and was running her first marathon at the same time that I was walking on this track.  The words,  Denise is running right now, if she can run a marathon I can at least run the rest of this track, popped into my head.  (It was not until after I started this blog post that I realized that not only had Denise ran her marathon and completed it she had undergone chemo just 4 days prior to the race... she is amazing and inspirational!)   Thinking about Denise was all the motivation I needed I then picked up my feet and ran as fast as I could around the rest of that track.  I proudly crossed that finish line in the back of the pack in 88th place with the most amazing time I have ever seen out of myself on a 5k.  32:55 over three and a half min. faster then my previous PR.   Even though there were not to many people to cross that finish line behind me I was elated.

I completely out of breath walked up to the equally out of breath couple and gave them a high five and a congrats on a job well done.  It was fun having them to go back and forth with the whole race.  Then I was off to find Stacey who had crossed the finish line so much farther ahead of me that she already had her breathing regulated and was no longer out of breath.  ahahahh   She did amazing.   While waiting for the results I congratulated some of the staff from Health Quest (my physical therapy place)  They all did so well and the majority of them got medals too.  This race was amazing and I am already looking forward to doing it again next yr.


Me and Stacey after the Wildcat 5k