Thursday, February 9, 2012

My First 5K!!!

The past 2 weeks have been pretty exciting for me in my training and weight loss.

First, look to the top right-hand side of this page at my Daily Mile Widget. Those are all the miles that I've logged since I started running in Mid-October. It's in the triple digits!!!

Second, I weighed in this week at Weight Watchers and my weight was 185.6. I hit the 30 LB mark!!! That's what I've lost since I started WW in early September. Add it to what I lost before and my grand total is somewhere near 70 LB or so. I also used one of those online BMI calculators and discovered that I am ONE TENTH of a POUND away from being OVERWEIGHT!!!

Today I went shopping and although I wasn't there for jeans, I decided to try on a pair just to see if I could fit into the size below the one I'm wearing right now. I grabbed a size 10 and headed for the dressing room - telling myself the whole time to not expect it to fit and to not be too disappointed when it didn't. I pulled the jeans on and THEY FIT!!!!! I didn't buy them but I'm thrilled that I was able to get them on. For the past 8 years my goal has been to get to a size 12-14, which was where I was before my first pregnancy. I hadn't even thought about going beyond that!

Now, on to the race!
This year our area, along with much of the country, has been experiencing a very mild winter. There haven't been many days with temperatures below freezing but race day did happen to be one of them.

The night before the race it rained which meant ice. It wasn't a really heavy rain though so the car didn't need to much by the way of scraping. I had trouble deciding what to wear though. I had picked out my shirt and pinned my number on it the night before. I also knew I'd be wearing my running tights and shorts over. I just couldn't decide if I needed to wear anything under my long-sleeved shirt. Since the temperature was supposed to be in the low 20's, and that's a bit cooler temp than I had run in before, I decided to go ahead and wear a sleeveless tech shirt under.

So, after eating breakfast and getting dressed I was ready to go!


I was excited and nervous all at the same time.

As I was leaving my husband said the nicest thing to me. He said "I'd tell you 'good luck' but you don't need it. You've got this." Even just typing that out makes me choke up a little.

I drove to the race location and got there almost an hour before the race started. Thankfully there was an indoor area that we could wait and we could also use the indoor restrooms. All that was left to do was wait until start time.

About 20 minutes before the start I decided to go ahead and use the restroom and go to the starting line. I was worried that it was a bit early but I am so glad I picked that time. The line for the women's restroom was out the door and down the hall! Luckily I was able to make it to the start line in time.

We all gathered in the starting area.


That blow up arch served as both the starting line and the finish line.


And where I took the picture was about as far back as I was when the race officially started.

So the race starts and, with the crowd, we walked up to the starting line. One we got past that we were able to spread out more and I was able to start running. I remembered to start the stopwatch on my phone as well.

Now, with the rain the night before I was concerned about ice on the street. But I have to say that they did a very good job salting the roads. There were only a couple small patches of ice where there had been puddles.

I don't remember too many specifics of the race other than there were a LOT of turns on the route. There were also a lot of hills but, since one of the streets that I run on has a lot of hills I was pretty well prepared for them. There were also race volunteers cheering us on along the route.

At about the 1 mile mark we saw the leaders on their way back to the finish line. I knew it was the 1 mile mark because I heard someone behind me saying it was and someone else saying "We've only gone one mile??? %&*#!!!!!" Naturally this made me laugh. Hey, it's the little things, you know?

After several more turns and hills we came to the area where they were handing out water. Now, this being my first race I had never done the water hand off thing before. I was able to slow down and take the water with no problem. It was drinking it that was difficult. I didn't want to stop running because I was afraid it would be hard to start again. But yeah, I should have stopped. The water went down the wrong pipe and I spent the next few seconds coughing. I also got it all over my face and the front of my shirt. I'm sure I was a sight! Luckily the coughing didn't last long and I was able to get back to running.

One thing about running in an unfamiliar area is having no idea how far I've gone or how far I have to go. As I was running I thought I was nearing the finish line because I heard a LOT of cheering. Turns out it was a couple of really enthusiastic volunteers at one of the turns. So we still had a bit of a ways to go.

Finally I get close to the finish line. I decided to give it my ALL in crossing. I crossed the line and looked at my stopwatch. 40 minutes!!!!! Now this may seem slow to some but it's the fastest that I've ever run that time. I walked to the first finish line volunteer and gave her my race tag. Then I went to the second volunteer and...

I got leid!!!!!


Since this was the "Winter Luau" they had leis for all the finishers. It was kind of cool.

I was really excited that I finally had earned the right to wear this:


From what I hear it's a race etiquette thing that you don't wear the shirt until after you've finished the race. I'm glad I read that before my first race, lol.

The official times were posted the following day. Mine was 40:30. This race was "gun time," meaning that when the starting gun went off the time started no matter where you are or how long it takes you to get to the starting line and there is someone at the end with a clicker tracking when each participant crosses the finish. Other races are "chip timed" which means that you get a timing chip to tie to your shoe and your time starts when you cross the start line. It'll be interesting to see the difference in times when I participate in a chip timed race as opposed to a gun timed race.

All in all this was a wonderful experience and I look forward to participating in many more!

3 comments:

  1. Awesome job, Cindi! You might consider asking that nice husband of yours for a Garmin for an upcoming gift :-) I have the old 305, which you can get for just over $100, and I love it. There are merits to running without one, of course. But it is nice to know how far you've gone and what you have left. Sounds like you did great, and like me you're addicted to the races. I've already signed up for five this year already! You've made some outstanding progress...great job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had to laugh.....the person who asked "we've only gone one mile? *&&(!!!!" Yeah,that was probably me lol Considering I was just a minute behind you,thats probably an accurate assumption that it was ME who said that lol

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OMG, that would be so funny if it was you that I heard say that! Well, if it was, you gave me a bit of entertainment on the run. :-)

      Delete