Snoball Run 5K Recap

Considering I work for the school that hosted the run, I figured I should support our athletic teams and use this race as my training run for the day.  I would have run Saturday morning anyway so why not run with almost 600 of my closest friends.  Since there were close to 600 people registered to run the event, I knew parking would be a bit challenging.  I went ahead and parked at one of my employees houses and walked to the race with her.  The best part about racing where I work was the fact that I had access to my office and to the line-free restrooms just down the hall from my office.  It was nice to be able to leave my goodie bag, etc in my office during the race.  One other perk to working at the race location was the fact that the athletic director was kind enough to pick up my race packet as well as those of my two employees that walked the race.  We didn't have to wait in line at packet pickup and our numbers and goodie bags were in my office when we arrived.  Normally I run a pace run on Saturday mornings so my plan for the race was to finish in 25 minutes as that would put me within 20 seconds of my usual Saturday morning pace.  The race started and I fell into a nice groove pretty quickly.  I looked down at my watch and noticed I was holding 7:45 pace.  I was quite happy with this as I didn't feel like I was pushing hard to maintain it.  Mile one came and went in 7:45.  Just after mile one I caught up to some of the male high school swim team members and decided to run the rest of the race with them.  They were quite entertaining as they would ask how far into the race we were.  When I told them we were at 1.85 miles they mentioned that I was awesome because I knew the mileage so well.  I had to admit to them that it was only because I was wearing a Garmin.  We managed to get to the two mile mark with a 7:38 pace.  We continued on and the swimmers were discussing their plans to kick it in the last half mile.  Once we got to that part of the race, I did let them know the mileage.  I managed to stay with the swimmers through mile three which we hit at a 7:42 pace.  Now you would think at this point the swimmers would run it into the finish with me but of course in true high school student fashion they made a point to out kick me in the end.  I tried to stay with them but alas I just couldn't.  I finished a few strides behind them with a time of 23:35.  I was incredibly happy with my time considering it was much faster than 25:00 and I never felt like I had to push hard to maintain the pace.  After a few minutes, I headed back to my office to grab my things and then ran the one mile cool down back to my employees house to get my car.  I could have left my goodie bag in my office until I came into work on Monday but I really wanted to wear the shirt this weekend so I carried the bag for my cool down.

See how cute!!

Saturday's 5K was the first running of this event.  I am truly hoping it becomes a yearly occurence.  It was nice to be able to run a race so close to home.  Sunday morning I met up with my friends Missi and Kim for a long run.  The run was great and very scenic.  I had to work hard for the miles as my legs were still feeling Saturday's 5k but it was definitely worth it.

The beauty that is in our backyard

I think I was most impressed by our 1:30 finish time (9:00/mile) considering we didn't start out at that fast of a pace.  Here's a look at the splits:  9:34, 9:23, 9:02, 9:24 (the hill we love to hate), 8:45, 9:25 (the hill we love to hate take two), 8:42, 8:53, 8:41, and 8:23.

Keep running, you're simply the best, and you inspire me!!