My First Race

Saturday I did something I never thought I would do, until a year ago:

 

I entered my first race ever! I have been running since July and recently finished the C25K program and I really wanted to run a 5k to know what that would be like. As you can see I was very excited and it was very cold outside, about 4C. I was wearing a tank top and a long sleeve underneath the sweater, lol. I took off the coat right before we started.

Here I am at the start line: Find Wally hahaha!

 

On the bottom left of the black tent you can see two grey arms coming up, that’s me!

We took off after the guy shot the gun (it sure was a loud gun!) and everybody sprinted away and I was the last one bahaha. I looked around and saw no one else coming and I thought, okay I better speed up a little, or I am going to loose the entire group! In the first corner I passed several people because there was a lot of obstruction with the whole group trying to push through it. But, those people never passed me again! I tried to run calmly, like I am used to do. The area was beautiful and I enjoyed running in the woods for a change. Some of the trails were a bit muddy which made it difficult to maintain an even pace. Still, I managed to catch up with and then pass several runners. There was a group of three equally dressed girls and I had passed two and was passing the third when we ran onto the finish field already. All that was left was like 200 or 300 meters. So I passed the third girl (see the first two pictures below) and then put my headphones away. I want to fully experience my first finish.

Here I am, sprinting away towards the finish. I also spotted another girl and was catching up with her quickly…

After I made the last turn I knew I would be able to beat the girl. you can see me running on the right, and the girl, still in front of me on the left. I caught up with her and sprinted past her. But then she tried to pass me again. Luckily I noticed in time and accelerated a little more…

And I beat her by a couple of meters (=1 sec haha)!!! The Boyfriend that she tried but had to give up and that the look on her face when she noticed she couldn’t win was really funny!

Poor boyfriend was being supportive and freezing his butt off standing in the cold. But he made all the pictures which I am very thankful for!

You could not win anything in this race, so I made up a first, second and third place for myself. I figured I would probably run around 32 minutes and I hoped for not being last:

3. Finish under 35 min.
2. Not finish last.
1. Finish under 30 min.

I ended up running the whole thing in 30.15 min! I am so happy about that, I almost got my self-proclaimed first place! And I never even thought I would get close. And the cool thing is that as soon as I have a little more experience running 5ks, I will be able to distribute my energy better and get way better times. I am definitely going to practice on that and do another race in a mile. I had so much fun doing this!