A Good Day for a 5K.

Yesterday was the Provo City Marathon/Half Marathon/5k. Having just done the SLC half, I opted to do the 5k for this one. The race started pretty late (well, for race standards) at 9:00. PJ and I rolled into the race at about 8:45, and getting my race packet, and affixing my number to myself, I waited around for it to get started. At the Provo race, they have a thing where the mayor of the city does this race, and he starts 1 minute earlier than the rest of us, and if you beat the mayor, you get a sticker for it. I’ve never been able to do this. I think one year, I was close, but he was definitely ahead of me. I’ve been feeling no good going into this race. Not like, sick or anything, but I feel like my running has slacked off this winter, because I’ve been lazy, and I’ve been running shorter distances all season, and at slower paces, so I went into this knowing I would struggle. We all lined up, and after the mayor took off, the gun went off.

I took off at a pretty good pace, not too fast, but not a slower one. After a few minutes, the people did what they usually do, and we all thin out, we don’t run right next to each other. I do this thing in races, I pick out someone a little bit ahead of me, and I want to beat them. So, I keep them in my head, and if I happen to pass them, I pick someone else. There was a girl that I had run passed, and after a few minutes, she passed me again. and went a bit in front of me. I still had her in my mind as someone I wanted to pass, but I was just right behind her. We were almost side to side. I got to the second mile, and in my brain, I went, ok, there’s just one mile left, so I can give it all I’ve got, and then that’s it, I’ll spend the day recovering from it. So I took off, and left the girl behind, and finally, there was the finish line, and I went as fast as I could at this point, and crossed the finish line. When I got there, they cut off my chip, and handed me a slip of paper. I got to the water, took a cup, and then looked at the paper they gave me:

I beat the mayor! I didn’t expect that to happen at all! I waited a few minutes, then PJ crossed the line, and we cooled down. After a couple of minutes, they posted the race results, and I went to look at how I did. And…I was third in my age group! I couldn’t believe it, I was so psyched. So, after a loooong time of waiting (seriously, it was an hour) finally, they had an “awards ceremony” (really, just a guy standing by a table shouting names) and I got one!

Huzzah! I was really psyched for this, because I was just so doubtful, and I thought I had no chance. I’m going to step up my running again, I need to get back to the fitness level I was at last year, but at least now I know I’m not as far back as I thought, and that makes me feel pretty good.