Homecoming 5K

This morning I participated in another 5K run with my girlfriend!  It was really interesting this time around because we had a little experience under our belt.

Things that were different:

We "warmed up" at the indoor track by walking a couple of laps.
It was half an hour earlier start time but warmer (not that 5 degrees warmer makes a difference when it's 30-35 degrees outside)
Not run on a walking trail, but on the soccer field and grassy/woodsy areas around the campus
No water hands outs!  What the heck?

I dressed exactly the same for this 5K because the weather was going to be similar and I found myself sweating after 10 minutes.  It was that uncomfortable hot yuck feeling when you just want to tear off all your layers so you can at least get a breeze on your skin.  My yellow long sleeved has a tiny pocket on the side seam where I was able to hide my key fob and I'm already used to holding my phone as I run so we found a good place to toss our sweaters and continued on.  I admit that when we started out I felt really good about it and was like "Yeah, I got this!"  Maybe half a mile into it when I realized it was going to be all terrain running I was like "Oh crap".  :)

What we both found interesting about this race is that there were no good markings to tell how far you've gone so for me at least I felt like we were just running in circles (which we were; the race looped through and over itself a few times).  I think this and the terrain and just not having been as dedicated to running this past month as before made for what felt like more walking.  But in reality we both finished at 36:10 which is about on par from our last 5K.  We both surmised that while we took more walking breaks, they were definitely shorter breaks while last time we look less walking breaks but for longer stretches.  Either way we were both very proud of ourselves for finishing the 5K, doing better than we expected and hey, we got tee shirts!

I'm still not a big fan of long distance running, but I do revel in the fact that 3 miles is not impossible for me.  Running a half-marathon or even a marathon is probably something that I will never aim to do, but we shall see.  Heck, I never thought I'd be doing a 5K either :)

To wrap up here are some songs that helped me along my run this morning

"Americano" by Lady Gaga
"Umbrella" by Rihanna
"Let's Get Retarded" by Black Eyed Peas
"Dog Days are Over" by Florence and the Machine
"The Next Messiah" by Jenny Lewis

And the rest are a blur :)