My First 5K

Well the overall experience was really positive. My time was a lot slower than I had hoped for though. My official time for the 5K was 38:41; although my nikeplus said that I finished it about 15 seconds faster (I started it when I started running and before I had crossed the start line). They started everyone at the same time and had a racing chip for when we crossed the finish line.

The race started out great; we were all lined up in the road at the park. But then at about two-tenths of a mile we had to all funnel into a 6ft-8ft wide trail. It took it about a mile for the crowd to thin out and for me to pass all of the walkers that had lined up ahead of me. My pride was only slightly injured when I got passed by a guy pushing a stroller and a guy wearing a full fireman’s outfit including the mask. The course itself was really nice, I enjoyed running mostly in the shade and through the wooded areas. The weather cooperated on race day as well. It was overcast and humid, but it didn’t rain and we all enjoyed a little bit of a breeze.

I would say that there were two reasons that my time was slower than I expected. The first was that I didn’t handle the water station very well. They had ice cold water and I downed half of the cup really quickly and attempted to run with the remaining water in the cup, which worked about as well as you could expect. I didn’t want to give up the water (I was ready for some water way before the water station, since it was so humid outside) and they only had one trash can and I didn’t like the idea of throwing it on the ground. I ended up carrying it about a quarter of a mile before I finally just dumped it out and threw the cup as close to another cup as I could. The next half of a mile went really well, the water seemed to renew my energy levels and I passed the 2 mile marker and could see the final leg of the race. Well at about that time I started to get stomach cramps, presumably from drinking the water too quickly and went as long as I could without stopping. I ended up walking about 2 whole minutes before the cramps passed and I felt like I could run again without getting sick. By this point I had seen my goal time pass by so I picked up my pace for the last little bit of the race and was really happy to see my family at the finish line waiting for me!

The other reason that my time wasn’t as good was because I treated the race like an easy training run and didn’t push very hard in the beginning and at about the time that I had planned to pick up the speed was when I was trying to walk off those stomach cramps. At least I have something to work towards and I was already looking up other races this summer to do before the half-marathon.

So some things that I would do differently next time would be to bring my own water. If I had sipped a little bit here and there I don’t think that I would have run into the same problems with my stomach. I actually already ordered a handheld bottle to try out this week. I would also try to pick up the pace earlier than I did this weekend and try to run the race in general a little bit faster than a training run. I also really really want to run a whole 5K, and I will be working on that this week during my training runs.

The trouble with jogging is that the ice falls out of your glass. ~Martin Mull