Ringing In The Spring – My First 5K In 10 Years!

Today I ran my first 5k in 10 years, the Valparaiso YMCA Ringing In the Spring! I had set myself a goal of running a 5k by the end of 2014… Now my goal is an 8k by the end of the year! I have two in my mind so we will see what happens!

I ran cross country in high school and in my very first race I ran 28:10. For three more years I never hit it again. I think the closes I came was 29 something. Despite training 9 minute miles lately, I was convinced there was no way I would come close. I set my goal time to be 30 minutes. I thought that would be pretty awesome for my first race in 10 years!

The promise of 47 degrees on race day did not deliver… Well it did but not during the race! It was somewhere around 37 degrees when we started the race. I totally did not realize how many hills we have around here. Right off the start we were going up and down hills through various sub divisions. I did not expect that for some reason and automatically convinced myself that there was no way I would hit my goal of 30 minutes. Not to mention I never thought about the amount of people we had to dodge for the first part of the race.

Low and behold… I PULLED IT OFF! Crossing the finish line the official time was somewhere around 29 minutes. We had been at least a minute behind the start (so. many. people.) so I thought MAYBE I was somewhere in the 28’s. I was SHOCKED to look at my watch and see 27:54! Not only did I beat my goal time of 30 minutes but I also beat my all time pr by 16 seconds. I still wasn’t convinced my official time would beat it though. My official time came in at 27:56! I hit it by 14 seconds. I was sooo excited. In the end I wound up getting 11th in my age group, another HUGE shock.

I have a few more 5ks lined up in the next few months, an 8k in September and *crossing my fingers* a 10k in November. Will it happen?