...And I Ran, I Ran So Far Away

Today was my 5K run. I have to say that I was not excited. I had weird dreams the night before about not being able to run and having rubber legs that I had no control over. So needless to say when it was time to go to the race, I was a little nervous. Andrea and I got there about 10 minutes before the race started and made our way to the registration table. They looked me up on the registration sheet, and my free T-shirt and race number was not there. I had to re-sign in so that I could get a new race number. Luckily they didn't charge me again.

As we were lining up to start the race, I heard one of the ladies who was some sort of an official say that there were about 600 people there. That's a lot of people. Here I was thinking this was going to be some small thing with maybe 80 people max. It was huge. There was even a band. I don't remember hearing them play anything, but they were still there set up and ready to play.

After the Star Spangled Banner, the race started. I felt pretty good as the race started. Especially after not keeping up on my training like I should have. I made sure to keep a nice steady pace so that I wouldn't poop out at the end. I didn't really think about much during the race, mostly just putting one foot in front of the other and reciting in my head the words of songs playing on my ipod. I was pretty happy when I came to the 1 mile marker. I had run a mile, and I wasn't even tired. I felt really good. That all changed by the 2 mile marker. There were people out there handing out cups of water to the runners. Just like you see on TV when you watch a marathon. I was still feeling pretty okay, not great, but okay. So I took some water. Drinking while running is an interesting experience. The water got up my nose. The water that I got in my mouth wasn't cold and trying to swallow was hard. In fact it made me feel kind of nauseous. So I quickly threw the cup away. I ended up surprising myself by how far I was able to go without walking. I went just over 2 miles before my body needed a break. So I decided to walk. Oh, did it feel good. I had only walked for maybe 2 or 3 blocks when I came to the 2 1/2 mile marker. The girls at the checkpoint were really encouraging and said that there was only half a mile left. I thought to myself, I can pick up the pace and almost sprint the last half mile. Big mistake! Although my mind said to sprint the last half mile, my body disagreed. I made it maybe a quarter mile while sprinting and then I just felt sick. I have never ever felt that bad before from running. I looked up and there was Andrea cheering me along. Just then, some 10 year old kid passed me with no problem. I was a little jealous of his endurance and energy that he had. Anyway, I gave up trying to sprint to the end and just decided to slow my pace back down to what I was doing before.

I managed to finish the race in a time of 31 minutes and 41 seconds. Not phenomenally fast, but about 10 minutes faster than I thought I was going to finish. I was feeling really good about myself and my performance. Not that I want to run another one tomorrow or anything. But I would like to run another 5k again. My friend Danny mentioned to me that there is another 5k race on Labor Day. So I guess I should keep up with the running so that I can do that race. Maybe I'll even get a better time.