JC5K Recap!

I mentioned the other day that my 1st 5K was 2 years ago at The Jennie Carol 5K and I finished in a crazy slow time of 42 something and walked a lot of it. I have really been working on speed work once a week while I have been marathon training all fall and winter so I was really anxious to see what it would look like outside. I do all weekly runs on the treadmill so I had no idea what I could do outside. On Thursday I went outside and ran a 5K in 24:00 even. My PR coming into this race was 24:28 so I wanted to break that but really wanted to come in at under 24 minutes!

I have NEVER analyzed a bib number but when I was handed my bib number three things stood out to me: 3 plus 4 equals 7, my phone number in the dorm in college was 3477 and the race is on the 7th! I was feeling like it was going to be a good race.

I was really nervous the morning of the race and considered running the whole thing with my mom! But I had trained my butt off and wanted to try and see what could happen. I took off with Jeremy and we were going out super fast! 7:25ish and I was wanting to maintain more like 7:45. Mile one was 7:20 and Jeremy was trucking on without me : ( and I knew I needed to hit the second mile at 15:00 even or less. Unfortunately I hit mile #2 at 15:03 and I was sorta bummed. BUT I kept on pushing hard telling myself there was still a chance. I never looked at my watch but knew I needed to hear the slow down beep (7:30) to hit sub 24. Coming into the last few tenths I caught up with Jeremy and he told me I was close to 23:30 and I thought he was just making me feel better BUT I looked at the stadium clock and saw 23:18 and decided to kick it in high gear around the track. I hit my watch as quick as I could and it said 23:35 so I was pumped!

When they gave out rewards I found out that my time was actually 23:30! I have wanted to place at Jennie Carol so bad because you get a hat! The hats and shirts are really cute : ) Needless to say I am really excited and super proud of myself. I never go into a race wanting to beat anyone just myself! Financially I do not have the money to do the 5K thing this summer so I was hoping to do well at this one. I will continue to work on speed work but my "racing" shoes are put on hold and I am working on getting stronger and distance! Hope everyone had a great running weekend and I will have more pictures to share from my good friend Crystal who was snapping away.