My First 5k

I have always been decidedly anti-running. I have mercilessly and gleefully mocked those strange creatures who seem to enjoy running for the mere sake of running. But after Benjamin was born I decided to prioritize getting back in shape (relatively speaking) and took up running as the cheapest option. I try to do workout videos at home but I often find it difficult to commit the time because I get easily distracted by other things around the house and if I even so much as attempt to do a sit-up, I have at least two children trying to crawl on top of me. So running was the next best option. After my parents bought me a jogging stroller, I found a few great trails nearby that I could run on and have been running (or to be more accurate, walking) at least two or three times a week since March. The kids enjoy riding in the stroller (and I fill them up on a lot of snacks) and I've been listening to a ton of podcasts. (Pop Culture Happy Hour is my favorite, if you were wondering.) 

So a few weeks back, a woman in my ward posted about an early bird turkey trot with options to do a 5k, 10k, 15k, or half marathon and wondered if anyone wanted to join her. And forgetting decades of mockery, I decided to sign up. 

Angie, Alisa, me, Kim, Zoie, Michelle, Angela, Jill

There ended up being eight of us on race day. Here we are before the race. Four of us did the 5k--including one girl who is 32 weeks pregnant--and four did the 10k. And since I'd never done a race before, I got my best time! But really, I did finish faster than I have in my other previous practice runs. After the advice of a friend who does marathons, I decided to run intervals--run three minutes, walk one minute--and my time drastically improved. I finished in just under 31 minutes, running an average of 10:15/mile. Before, I'd been doing about an 11 minute mile.  

Here we are at the finish line. You can see that my hair is pretty crazy now. Afterwards we went out to brunch at a local cafe. The service was a bit spotty but the food was delicious. I got the eggs benedict because that's become my litmus test for whether or not a restaurant has a good brunch. And they brought us some of their homemade donuts which were delicious. So all in all, I enjoyed my very first 5k and I may just be persuaded to do it again.