It has been a a few years since I’ve done a 5k. I believe the last one I ran was a Color Me Rad race a few years ago. I use to run 5k’s all the time back in high school so I was curious as to what my 5k time would now be. This race was located at Mount Trashmore Park in Virginia Beach. I use to live out in this area back in college and I was due for a much needed visit. I drove up after work on Friday and caught up with an old friend. Traffic was horrendous and I ended up getting in my first fender bender in the tunnel 🙁 (That was quite an awful situation).

I took it pretty easy that night. It was definitely a long day since I had been at work since 7:30am. My friend and I debated on going out somewhere, but I figured it would be best to just hang around the apartment. My friend had MTV on and we watched some Catfish and that old movie Scream came on. I’m also a sucker for frozen yogurt so we tried the new yogurt place on campus which was pretty good. Being in the area sure made me miss being in college again.

The day before the race my friend and I decided to go to Water Country, but traffic ended up being so bad that we went to Yorktown beach instead. It was very crowded that day and it started to drizzle a little bit when we got there. I wasn’t able to get much sun unfortunately so we just laid around and caught up. We ended up eating dinner at a place called Cheddar’s in Newport News. It was a very good restaurant that was extremely packed. I ended up getting a salad since I knew I had a race in the morning.

I tried not to worry much about this race because it was just a 5k, but my pre-race jitters still seem to keep me up at night. I woke up early that morning to my usual whole wheat cinnamon raisin toast with apple butter. I know to never try anything new and I always seem to crave the same food anyways. The course was pretty straight forward and flat. We had to run around the lake twice.

Since this race was just a 5k, I needed to warm up for it. Usually I don’t warm up much for my longer races and just warm up as I’m running. I got there pretty early and picked up my bib and shirt. I was surprised to see many people were already there when I thought I was pretty early. I ended up jogging around the lake once for a warm up and did some stretching.

I always tend to worry about pacing myself. I am so use to saving my energy and pacing half marathon distances that a 5k seemed like a sprint to me and I hate sprinting. I always seem to dread it a little bit every Tuesday when I sprint with my trainer, but I know it’s good for me! I tried to tell myself that I needed to exert most of my energy in 3.1 miles instead of saving it. I know I am a lot stronger when it comes to endurance over speed. Shorter runs seem to stress me out more compared to longer runs because I know I need to run them at a quicker pace.

It was VERY humid and hot that morning. While warming up I climbed to the top of Mount Trashmore to admire the view.

I almost didn’t make it back in time for the start of the race because I went to use the bathroom last minute. The race started about 4 minutes earlier at 8:56am. When I started off I did my best to get past the crowd.

Just after the first loop, the heat felt like it was already starting to get to me. The sun was beaming pretty hard on everyone that morning. The race would have been a lot nicer with an earlier start time (I’m hoping they will start it earlier next year). I thought it was pretty nice that this race gave away medals. I’ve noticed that most 5ks don’t give out medals so this was a nice add to my collection.

                                                                                            

As you can see in my run splits, the heat started to get to me and I started slowing down. But I still ended up doing better then I thought I would! I ended up underestimating myself yet again. I was worried it was going to be a lot more competitive with the age group awards because my age group was 20-29 year old females which is a lot bigger compared to the five year age groups that I’m use to. The goal was top quarter and I ended up placing as second overall female out of 191 females!! I ended up receiving a hand painted coconut for my award which I thought was pretty cool. The coconut made a great addition to the top of my desk at work. My goal was to eventually place in the top three females and I’m glad to say I finally did it! Next goal is to place as overall first female!