On Friday night, I decided that I needed to buy something new and green to wear for the race on Saturday. After hunting around a little bit, I found this sparkly long-sleeve T-shirt from Old Navy for $9. We've had fairly cool weather this week, so I figured long sleeves would be nice for the race. We got down to Five Points at about 7:15am, and it was pretty breezy, so it turned out to be an OK decision. I only got hot toward the end of the race, and once we were done running, I was glad again to have on long sleeves.
The Get to the Green 10K was a first annual event, and also my first official 10K. The 5K race is a really popular event that occurs every year in conjunction with the 5 Points St. Patty's Festival and parade. and I was excited that they added on the longer distance this year. Throw in a tech shirt and free admission to the festival, and that was a deal of a race!
Going in, I was dreading a few things. First, the race was a double loop, and I do not love running the same loop twice in a row. Then, the 5K started exactly 30 minutes after the 10K, and the routes crossed paths a few times. The 5K had 2-3 times as many runners as the 10K, so it got really crowded for us just after mile 3. The roads were really crowded and I felt like I wasn't keeping a good pace, especially when the 5K runners joined us. There weren't any mile markers for the 10K and my GPS wasn't working, so I really had no idea. Ryan ran with me the whole way until we had about a quarter of a mile left. He ran ahead and was able to finish about a minute ahead of me. Turns out, I was actually keeping a pretty good pace, finishing at 1:05:25. Going in, I was hoping to beat 1:10, so goal accomplished!
One of the cool things that happened was the winner of the 10K (along with his police escort to help get him through the crowd) passed us at about mile 3. All I can say is, WOW. He was booking it, going at a pace about twice as fast as ours. It was cool to look down the hill an actually see the winner finish the race... not so cool that we still had 3 miles to go!
Here we are after the race -- Deedee, Russ & Jennifer met up with us at the finish after running the 5K.
I think it is safe to say that I'm going to be hooked on the 10K distance race. It was long enough to make it feel worthwhile to pay the money, but not so long that you have to do any major training leading up to it. Also definitely a distance I feel like I can work to improve my time. The next race on the books is the Heart & Sole Women's 5-Miler on April 27th.
The weather was really nice so we came back to the festival later in the day to enjoy some Bluegrass and Shag music -- stayed just long enough to get a funny sunburn..... aaah the joys of early Spring!
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