My town was hosting an inaugural 5K yesterday.   I had signed up for it a month ago as a way to support the event, but really was not sure if I was going to even run it.    The race was to start at 7:30 and a friend texted me in the late afternoon and I still didn’t know if I was going to run or not.   I got dressed in my running gear and figured I needed to run anyway, so I headed over to pick up my bib.

Met up with some of my MRTT and chilled out a bit.

(This was post race, but we didn’t take a picture before the race.   Also, I forgot to tell you Happy Birthday!   My bad.)

Still didn’t know what I wanted to do, but knew I didn’t want to start in the back.   Would much rather start up front and fad to the back.   Besides it was elbow to elbow.    So I started near the front with another amazing MRTT Mama.   Then saw another one who was running with her two boys.   She was going to run with her 6 year old, but her 10 year old told her he was going to sprint ahead.

So when the race started, I sprinted behind a 10 year old the first mile.    He was faster than I wanted to run and he had no idea that I was following, but I figured I would stick with him and see where it took me.   We ran an 8:12 mile!   Oh my.  Did I mention that it was HOT too!    It was too much for both of us.   I saw him holding his side and I wanted to say something to him about how awesome he was doing, but I thought better since he didn’t know who I was and he might have thought I was a stalker:).   I was so proud of both of us, because although we both slowed for the second mile neither of us gave up.   At this point, I ran ahead as it was time to pace myself.

I will say that I didn’t really look at my watch except to see the distance.   I didn’t want to think about pace, I just wanted to run.    I pushed myself.   I was breathing hard.  I probably wasn’t smiling, but I was running.   This was a run that I needed.   This was the run I didn’t even know I wanted.   I can honestly say that I gave it my all the entire race and really don’t think that I could have pushed any harder than I did.     That really is all I can ask of myself.   At the end of the race I could barely breathe, but I did it.   I  finished in 26:26 which is a PR!

By the way, the 10 year old finished in 28:16!

So I believe the moral of this story is sometimes it is best not to think and just run.  I thought way to much in my 6K and not at all in this one.   The races could not have been any more different.   It might also have helped that this run was in my backyard, so I also knew many people.   Who knows.   All I know is that maybe overall I should just stop thinking so much, stop looking at my watch so much, and just run.

 

 PS – the only reason I looked at my watch for distance was to know how far before I could stop