The Life of a Running Momma: Chilly 5k

My mom really wanted to run this race in Joplin on New Year's Day. I love the Race Into the New Year, but I don't love running a race so late at night because it's hard for me to wind down and go to sleep afterward. The years we've run it, I typically don't fall asleep until around 2 in the morning afterward. I thought a race at 10:15 in the morning on New Year's Day sounded pretty perfect instead. I looked at the race website and it's touted as the fastest 5k in Joplin with a point-to-point downhill course. Then I looked at the course map and knew the course went through a portion of the Joplin Memorial Run's course and it is not flat. I knew there was no way there weren't some fairly significant uphills and the course map showed 68 feet of elevation gain overall. Even so, I figured it would be a fast course and I was excited to shoot for a sub-21 again. Mom signed everyone up, including Ty and the kids, even though they likely wouldn't be running. She and Thomas both got sick before Christmas and still weren't feeling good going into the race. Thomas decided not to run and mom decided she'd go ahead and do it. My friend, Sara, messaged me the day before the race saying she'd decided to run it and saw I was registered when she was checking things out. I was excited for the added benefit of getting to see her as well. I slept in until 8 after staying up until after midnight the night before and still had time to eat oatmeal for breakfast and do yoga before we left. Ty, the kids, and I left a little earlier than everyone else so I could get a warm-up in before the race.

Jeremy and Moneypenny before the race.

When I packed for the race, it showed a forecast of 32 with feels like 32. The day before on my run it was 30, feels like 23 and I was so cold! Race morning wasn't quite as cold, but I was pretty cold on my warm up. My fingers were in pain by the time I finished 1.5 miles and stopped in to go to the bathroom before the race. During my warm up I saw Sara running to the start. She parked at the finish and ran to the start as her warm up. When I came out of the bathroom I saw Carter putting his bib on and found out he decided to walk the race with my mom. I looked for Ty at the start area and couldn't find him so I went to where he parked and figured I would leave my warm ups on the truck, but he was in the car so I tossed them through the window at him. I made it to the start line with a couple minutes to spare and found Sara so I lined up behind her. I had noticed there wasn't a timing mat at the start so I was pretty sure this was the kind of chip timed race where everyone's time started at the same time when the race started and their chip just registered the finish, so I wanted to make sure to start close to the front for an accurate time. She said running the course as her warm up, there were definitely hills on the course, but the race finished downhill. A woman standing next to her said she has run the race before and it's just the back half of the race that's downhill, the first half of the race has quite a bit of elevation gain. I was mentally prepared for that with what I'd seen from the course map, but I was glad they confirmed it and I knew better what to expect.

At the start, we were caught off guard by the really quick countdown to the start.

We took off and the start had a decent little hill we ran down so it went out fast. I immediately felt great and I was very confident about my goal of breaking 21 minutes. At the Jingle Bell 5k I felt terrible from the start and the pace felt like a struggle. With this one I felt really smooth. There were 2 women who went out hard and Sara stayed a smidge behind them. She pulled away from them pretty early on and I was a ways back from them. They were together in a pack with some men and I really wished I had a pack to run with, but I didn't want to go out too hard and pay for it later so I ended up running the whole race alone. I could see that pack ahead of me which gave me something to think about. I went through the first mile in 6:38 and I was really excited. I was 7 seconds under the pace I was shooting for. There were some long, small inclines in that first mile. The 2nd mile had quite a few more hills. I told myself if I lost a little bit of time in the 2nd mile, it would be okay because I'd be able to make up for it in the last mile with all the downhill. I did get a little nervous when I looked down at 1.58 and saw my overall time was 10:45 which would be a 21:30 if we were halfway finished. I knew I was over halfway, but it still made me a little bit nervous about breaking 21. I focused on maintaining pace as much as I could without pushing too hard. I went through the 2nd mile in 6:50. That was 5 seconds over the pace I was shooting for, but there was a decent amount of incline so I didn't worry about it.

Once I hit the last mile, I really took off and started pushing the pace. I felt really strong and was super excited. I knew I was going to keep chipping away at 21 minutes. With about a half mile to go a man passed me and I focused on maintaining the gap, not letting him pull too far ahead of me. Then with about a quarter-mile to go a guy wearing shorts and no shirt went flying past me. I tried to go with him, but he was really flying! At that point it was all downhill and I'm not the best downhill runner. I always pass people going uphill and tend to get passed on the downhills. I could see the finish line and took off. When I saw the clock, it wasn't much over 20 minutes and I knew I was going to be way under 21. I finished and looked at my watch. I saw I had averaged 6:35 pace and had it in my head I'd finished in 20:35. It wasn't until later when I looked at results that I realized I ran 20:31! My finishing kick downhill was 5:34 pace! I was 14th out of 259 overall, 4th out of 148 females, and 1st out of 20 in my age group. The top 3 women all finished in under 20 minutes!

It's too bad my eyes are closed in this one, it would have been a good picture!

I watched dad and Jeremy finish and then I took off with Sara and a friend of hers to do a cool down. We ran a mile back out on the course before we came across mom and Carter so they kept going and I turned around to finish with mom and Carter. They were walking and I got really cold walking so I started running out past them and then coming back. Then I found a park with a pond and Christmas trees sponsored by different companies that were decorated and ran around the park looking at all the trees. When I caught back up to Carter and mom they were really close to the finish and decided to run the rest of the way in. Carter joked that he was going to sprint to the finish to beat his Oma, but then ended up doing exactly that. They finished right as the fun run for kids was getting ready to start so the photographer didn't get any pictures of them finishing which I was bummed about because mom was dressed in a Frosty the Snowman costume and looked so cute!

Jeremy finished in 26:03. He ran with Moneypenny and she did a great job. He was 53rd overall and 5th in his age group. Dad finished in 27:36, 70th overall and 4th in his age group. He got a cramp in his leg and coasted into the finish because he didn't want to cause an injury. 3rd place in his age group passed him at the end of the race and finished 2 seconds ahead of him! Carter finished in 58:42, 253rd overall and 2nd in his age group. Mom finished in 58:51, 254th overall and 8th in her age group. We stayed for awards and missed hearing Carter called as 2nd in his age group. When I saw it in the results, he said that was okay, he didn't deserve an award because he walked the whole way. That cracked me up since people always complain about his generation and their participant ribbons and refer to them as entitled and whiners. There's just further proof to what I've always said that it's not the kids who want participant trophies and ribbons, it's their parents who think they need it.