5K

This past weekend was the 5K in Louisville. Despite many storms trying to stop me from getting to the ville I made it. Lexington and Louisville had made it on the Today show as the 2 cities in the bright red circle on the weather map. We had tornado watches from 12-8 so I booked it to Louisville to avoid them.

One thing I did to prepare for this race is something I have never done before but I read about it in a mental race planning article.  The article suggested you print out the race map and write notes to yourself on the course and things pertaining to your plan. So I wrote a few notes along the way and some of my goals, mainly to break 20 minutes.

I spent the afternoon on Friday, in a tank top outside, attempting to run the race course. It was so warm with the storms coming so it was great running weather. This was only an attempt because the race map was labeled incorrectly.  The first right turn was at the 1 mile mark onto Ohio St. Well this street didn't exist there so I ran on and eventually just turned around because the area was getting sketchy. So fail.

My sister and her husband live right on Main Street across from Slugger Field where packet pick up was so I got this out of the way and got my 2 hour trainer ride in while watching the news on the coming storms. My sister got out of work early but we were lucky enough not to get any of the severe weather. It did hit a lot of areas close by and these cities were pretty devastated by the storms. Kentucky made it onto the Today show again, unfortunately. Some pictures and coverage are here.

Race morning was not so good. I like to wake up 2 and a half to 3 hours before a race so I set my alarm for 5:30, woke up, pressed snooze, woke up, thought I pressed snooze again, then woke up at 6:45 and said an expletive. I quickly got out of bed, dressed and reluctantly bolted some oatmeal. My sister is super supportive so she woke up and walked down to the race start with me where I left her to get a warm up in of ~7 minutes of dynamic exercises followed by a 15 min run.

The only mistake I really made was starting too far back. I spent the first mile really jockeying for position with people and weaving my way through the crowd. I have also never come so close to so many spit wads! Everyone I came up on was like hacking lugeys right in front of me; I'm lucky I didn't end up with one on my bod.  It was frustrating but did work as a pretty great distraction so the race flew by. I came in at 19:58 so I met my goal but was not that thrilled with the result because I really thought I could have done better. Considering it is just the beginning of March and this was just a gauge of fitness at the end of a build week, I will take it.

Also, I got to go cuddle with this (my main motivation) after my race: