My first 5K!

It came and went!

The 5K I decided to do before I could even run for a minute and a half straight. It was my motivation for an entire summer of learning how to run. What I found out was; I can do it, and I no longer loathe it. I've also been bit by the 5K bug. Do they run 5Ks in Minnesota in the winter???



The day of the race was great. I wasn't nervous, I got myself and the kiddos ready by 8am, and we had a huge team show up in support of my cousin.

They printed up some cute shirts, and even included my goofy suggestions for a team slogan!

We had a couple of us running the 5K. I stuck with my cousin and we joked about not being ready, feeling like complete armatures, and not being aware it was a trail run full of rocks and hills.

This picture does no justice to the size of these hills!

We started about 50 seconds behind the pack because I was in the bathroom - oops! Oh well, we got to pass up some people and felt really great for the first mile. We started to hit the hills around mile two. I was so proud of us for keeping up an amazing pace - at least a minute faster than my normal pace. We ran like champs until the hills started getting bigger and ended up walking up three of them - still at a great pace. As we commented about how proud we were to only walk 3 hills (about 3/10 of a mile total), we hit the end and could hear the crowd cheering the runners. And then we saw it... The hills kept coming, full of gravel, and steeper than before! Each time we reached the top and made a turn it went up again! It was like a gravel spiral staircase! Whoever designed that deserves to be slapped a little... We rant the last stretch and came in somewhere after the 40 minute mark.

It felt great!!

I can't wait to do it again!

... Did I really just say that???...