St. Patrick's Day 5k

I still have a few posts related to Elise's birthday that I'd like to get up, sharing her birthday party details and how we celebrated on her birthday, but I thought I'd take a break from all the birthday posts to get caught up on our St. Patrick's Day fun. So on to a post about the St. Patrick's Day 5k...

This race will always be a special one for me because it was Ty's first ever 5k. We ran it together 5 years ago and on that day it was the longest he had ever run without walking. He finished the race in 33:13, surprising me by not only running the entire race but by running a faster pace than he had ever run for even one mile on our training runs. I ran the race with him, getting ahead of him and stopping to the side to take pictures. It was one of the proudest moments I've felt watching him accomplish something. He ran the race 5 years later pushing the double stroller with Carter and Elise and still finished 4 minutes faster than he had in his first race. It has been amazing to watch him progress as a runner. He has been dropping minutes off his 5k times and pounds off his weight. It has been an amazing journey to watch and one that I am still so pleased and proud to be a part of! I love that he keeps pushing and working and striving to become better. I also love that he steps in and offers to run with the kids so I can run a fast time, knowing I've been training hard and want to go for a good time.

Going into the race I was nervous. I ultimately would have loved to beat my postpartum PR of 20:29 from the Race Into the New Year, but I felt like that was a lofty goal. Something had been off with my training for the last couple weeks and my legs just weren't recovering from hard workouts like they normally do. I had been struggling through my speed workouts and tempo runs and hadn't gotten as many hard runs in before the race as I would have liked due to traveling. The Monday before the race I ran a 5k tempo to get an idea of what I was capable of. It wasn't the best indicator as the winds were gusting up to 30 mph and I had to run into the wind on the way back. I finished in 20:55. That made me feel confident that I should be able to break 21 minutes for sure so I set that as my goal. There was an inflatable for kids to play on by the finish area and we let Carter play on it before the race. Jeremy came to watch and I was quite excited to see him. With all the pre-race fun we ended up heading over to the starting line too late and couldn't get close enough to the race start to be with people more our pace. It took me around 15 seconds to get to the start line and then once I did I spent the entire first mile weaving around people and ended up making my way to the left side of the course and passing that way. The race is an out and back course with a slight but long incline heading up to the turn around. With all the congestion and weaving my first mile was a bit slower than I would have liked in 6:42. It also felt a bit rough which was disconcerting considering how much off my pace from the Race into the New Year it was, but I chalked some of that up to the hill.

Jeremy heading to the race start to cheer everyone on!

Heading toward the turn around I counted women as they went past me going the other direction toward the finish and I knew there were over 10 women ahead of me. I figured I must really be off pace because typically at this race 20:30ish would put me in the top 5 women. Heading back downhill was nice but we were also running into the wind on the way back. Thankfully the wind was nothing compared to what it has been lately! I was working really hard and my legs just weren't there. I was trying to pick up the pace and I just wasn't feeling it. I went through mile 2 in 6:38 which I was glad was faster than my first mile but I was a bit disappointed it wasn't faster with how much effort I was putting in. I started picking it up for the last mile and told myself I would really kick it in when I hit the final half mile. I passed a few runners and there was a pretty decent gap between me and the person closest ahead of me. I could see a couple of women and focused on closing the gap even though I knew I didn't have enough time left to catch them. I was gunning for sub-21 and knew I was going to be under for sure so I kept pushing to get as much under 21 minutes as I could. I hit mile 3 in 6:30 and really took off for the last tenth of a mile. As I approached the finish line I heard mom cheering for me. I stopped my watch and was shocked to see I had finished in 20:34! With how off my body felt and how hard I was working I really didn't expect to be under 20:45, let alone 20:40! I was quite pleased with my finishing time. My average pace for the race was 6:36.

My mom got a picture of me after I finished.

I grabbed some water which was in the tiniest little paper cups I've ever seen at a race. I ended up looping back by and drinking a total of 6 cups. They were the size of cups my grandparents used to keep in their bathroom for after you brushed your teeth. Not really sure what the point was in that, but it seemed quite wasteful! Then I walked out to watch everyone else finish. Thomas and dad both finished in under 24 minutes and looked great. I was impressed dad ran so well just a couple months after his surgery. After they finished I jogged out to run to the finish with Ty. Carter was stoked to see me and I enjoyed running back with Ty to tell him about my race. I finished out a mile cool down and then headed back with everyone else to drink some chocolate milk that was being passed out and to chat. The awards were beer steins and Thomas told me I better have won one so I went to check results and saw I had placed 2nd in my age group so we stuck around for awards. I was 58th out of 1,629 overall, 10th out of 912 females, and 2nd out of 109 in my age group with a time of 20:34. Thomas finished in 23:17 which put him 142nd overall and 11th out of 66 in his age group. Dad was close behind him in 23:31, placing 151st overall and 10th out of 61 in his age group. Ty rocked it out with the double stroller, finishing in 28:51 which put him 486th overall and 31st out of 66 in his age group. When I picked up my award I saw that the woman who was closest in front of me was the one who won our age group. She finished in 20:22. Right after the awards ceremony we headed out so I could put Elise down for a nap and everyone else headed out for breakfast at our favorite breakfast place. It was a fun race yet again and was so exciting to have Jeremy there with us! It won't be long before he's able to walk and then run races too!