My First 5K!!!

I'm going to have a little big of blogging ADD (bear with me) but I'm pretty pumped about this so I chose to blog about it now rather than later! :)  I set a goal for myself several months back that I would run a 5k.  I have NEVER been a runner, in fact I have always despised running so this was a little out of my comfort zone.  I started training for this about 2 months back, got a little lazy about it, got good about for like a week, got sick, and you know how the story goes.  I hadn't been very consistent about training but I knew that I could do it if I set my mind to it. This 5k was part of a 3 run series. There was a 5k, 10k, and a half marathon.  It was put on by our city and it was just a very impressive race! We got to wear real numbers and there was even a pasta dinner the night before!  Rather than chatting your ear off about every little detail I will instead share some pictures.  Here are pictures from our race this morning:

I guess I was still half asleep before the race.  Alarms were off at 6:10 this morning to get everyone up, fed, dressed, and out the door in time!

My friend Jessica (who had a baby Dec 26th!) was brave enough to try her first 5k as well!

Here's our crew!  

Here was the start of the race with everyone lining up. They had a giant American flag. There's better pictures of it later.

Brady was ready!  

I even ran into my friend Amy at the race as well.  

Brian and I waiting for the race to begin!  I told him just to take off and run with Brady. He's so much faster than I am and I didn't want to hold him back at all.

Lining up! There were approx 2,000 people that ran the race. Such a great turnout and such positive energy!

And we're off!!  The skies didn't look great but luckily the rain held off until after we finished.

A picture I took mid run.  The beginning of the race was a gravel road (a super hilly road at that!) which turned muddy since it had rained. Not super easy to push a stroller on but we did it!  The run went better than expected but I did walk twice briefly to catch my breath. I think that Jessica and I did a great job and set a pace that worked for us.  We passed some teenage girls and I heard them say, "Come on let's run, look at these moms out there running!"  

Here's us approaching the finish line

Crossing the finish line! It was so amazing coming into that stadium with so many people cheering. They called our names as we were finishing and it was just so neat!  And then they had a row of people handing out high fives and congratulations for finishing. It was a high, that's for sure! (The time isn't accurate though. That was the clock for the 10k race. We both were like, "Wow that took us a lot longer than expected!")

Action shot Brian took

WE DID IT!!

Yay!!

And we got a t-shirt out of it too!! :)

 Brian finished the race in 27:23.  He was 42nd!! I was so proud of him.  It couldn't have been easy pushing Brady (who weighs 35 lbs) in that car up all of those hills!  Jessica and I finished in 36:50 in 122nd and 123rd place (we beat 100 people!).  I really could have cared less about the time but it was neat to see how our times and placing.  I have definitely caught the race bug and am looking at doing another one June 1st. Next time I may try not pushing Layla and see if maybe I can get a faster time!