Monday, January 9, 2012

Week 1 in Review

It's been just over a week since 2012 began and (so far) I've kept on track with my goals for 2012.

I was active for at least 4 days this week. I played dodgeball Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night. I played football with friends on Saturday morning. And I ran a 5k on Sunday morning (race for January DONE). This led me into achieving (kind of) another one of my goals: break 24 minutes in the 5k!

Sunday morning, I picked Corey up way too early to head to the Frostbite 5k in Quincy, MA. We got to the YMCA that was hosting the event with more than an hour to spare - better early than late I guess. After warming up sitting and chatting for over an hour, we finally toed the start line.

As usual, I hadn't checked out the course map ahead of time because I don't like to know what lies ahead. I didn't wear my Garmin either, which meant I was running entirely by feel. This was my plan since I had only run at most 5 times in December.

I started out fast and could see the lead runners in the distance for the first half mile. However, the course had us turning onto a lot of side streets so eventually I lost them. The entire race felt challenging. I pushed myself as hard as I could. About 2 miles into the race, we hit an incline that was steep enough to force some people around me to walk. I wanted to join them but I thought I was keeping a pretty good pace and wanted to see what I could pull off with no training.

Before I knew it, I came around a corner and could see the high school that the finish line was across from in the distance. I didn't think I had any kick left in me, until I saw the clock from far away with a 22:XX on it. I couldn't believe it. I had a chance to break 24 minutes. I pushed with everything I had left and crossed the finish line in 23:25. I was stoked (after I stopped dry-heaving), but I was almost immediately certain that the course was short.



After going inside, Corey and I confirmed it with another runner who came in the top 3. He wasn't certain but said he'd guess it was between .1-.2 miles short. I was bummed because I really wanted to break 24 minutes and knew that if it had been the actual distance, I would have just missed it. Corey and I checked our times after they were posted (he came out 14th overall - speedy gonzales!) and headed home.


So I technically broke 24 minutes in the 5k, but after mapping out the course today and finding that it was exactly 3 miles, I'm not crossing this goal off yet. We're planning to run another 5k in February so I'm going to do some speed work this month in an attempt to officially break 24 minutes!

Overall: 63/260
Age Group: 4/29
Gender: 18/152

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