Last weekend I participated in a 5k race in my hometown with my little sister and Hubs. I decided to participate on a whim when little sister asked if I wanted to join her. I made her promise to walk with me and not leave me behind. She kept her promise!
At the start of the race I was really worried about being the slowest person. I'm really out of shape, and I have always struggled to run more than 1 mile without feeling sick. Luckily, there were lots of other walkers going at a leisurely pace!
About a third of the way into the race we walked past a house that had tables with small water cups for the runners. The homeowners were outside handing out water and cheering people on. They had a large speaker system hooked up and were playing the
Olympic theme song on repeat. It made us laugh and re-energized us. We each drank a sip of water and threw our cups in the air Olympic-style and started to jog to the halfway point of the race.
After jogging to the halfway point, we switched gears to speed walking again. We caught our breath, and enjoyed our second walk past the Olympic-theme-song-playing house. We kept an eye on an older lady in front of us to use as our "pacer" for the second half of the race.
As we neared the end of the race we decided to jog again so that we would jog through the finish line. Little sister kept a constant jogging speed right through the finish line while Hubs and I fell behind. The end of the race was up a steep hill and Hubs and I ended up stopping to walk up the crest of the hill. Once we caught our breath we continued jogging to cross the finish line. I even got a little competitive at the end and raced to beat the woman who was immediately in front of us.
It took us 38 minutes to complete the 5k with our mixture of speed walking and jogging. We weren't nearly the last people to cross the finish line, but we have some room for improvement for next year.
Running a 5k (running the whole thing without walking) is on my 30 before 30 list. I'll be sharing that list in a separate post soon!
