Valentines Day 5K recap

I had been dreading this 5K for a couple of weeks. I haven't really done speed work in months and I have been pretty slow since Memphis! That was until last week when Arland and I used our lunch runs as tempo runs. I was feeling a little more confident and ready to take on the 5K. Friday morning as I was having coffee with Michele I found out that her son Alex (7) was going to be running the 5K too. He was going with his dad, Michele and Abby had a birthday party to go to so were not going to be going to the race with us. I thought about Alex all day and in the afternoon decided to call him and see if he would like me to run with him in the race. He seemed pretty excited about it and we discussed what his goals were and what our stragegy would be. I WAS very excited! The pressure was off for me to run a certain time and I could just go and have fun. Russellville is about an hour and a half drive from Cabot but since the race wasn't starting until 9:00 we didn't have to get up at 4:00am! I made myself a bowl of oatmeal but only ate maybe a quarter of it. Jane came over about 6:30 and after one last trip to the bathroom we were off. Having Jane with us made the time just fly by and before I knew it we were in Russellville. It was chilly and pretty windy, I was wearing a skirt and a long sleeve tech shirt with my Cabot Cruiser singlet on top. As we were walking to the packet pick up table I hear a young voice call out "miss Annette" I turned and there was my buddy Harry C. actually it was the whole C. family. We chatted for a few minutes and I got some hugs and then we were off to get our race numbers. There was quite a big turnout for this race and a lot of people were doing race day registration, so many in fact they had to move the race start to 9:15. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal but it was pretty chilly so an extra 15 minutes of standing around kind of sucked!
Alex and I headed towards the back of the pack but realized we were with a group of walkers so we moved up a bit.
Alex had a very ambitious goal in mind for this race, his fastest 5K was a 32:59 and he wanted 29 minutes. His dad told him that probably wasn't realistic and I also talked to him about it a bit.
I had to really hold him back the first mile but I have run with Alex before and I know he goes out really fast and then when he gets tired he gets cranky and can sometimes shut down so my goal was just to keep him going.
First mile was an 11:06... perfect right where I wanted us to be. There was a group of people running with us most of the race, it looked like a mom and three or four kids, they were older than Alex but he made them his competition. They would run fast and then have to stop and walk, so we did the leap frog thing but eventually we passed them and they never caught up.
Second mile was 10:39. We were passing lots of people and I know that made Alex feel good, he was holding up really well, I would check on him, how are you feeling etc. Every now and then I would have to make him slow down a little bit.
Alex was constantly asking "how far-how long" so I was constantly looking at my Garmin. When we were at 17 minutes he said Josh is fnished now, and then at 18:30 he said Gary is finished now. When we were around 25 minutes he said my dad should be finished now. He knew everyone's goal times... he is a numbers kid!
We had steadily been picking up the pace, not pushing too hard but just a gradual build up. I could tell Alex was getting tired but he never complained. He had started asking about time and distance every few seconds... finally just before we hit the three mile mark I said lets just run. I was really pushing him but he was tired, he kept running and was running a good pace but just didn't have that last sprint to the finish I was hoping for. We finished in 32:56 a PR and a good race. He seemed pretty happy with it. I was very proud of him, he ran every step no walk breaks. The third mile was 10:04, I don't know what the last .1 was because I forgot to turn my Garmin off until we were out of the shute.
I really really really loved every minute of this race. It was such a joy to run with Alex and help him run a good steady pace.
They also had a kids 1 mile race so it was quite a bit before they got to the awards ceremony and then they had some glitches with placement. I was VERY dissapointed because instead of having the 5-9 age group they lumped 1-14 all together so Alex did win an award. On the online results listing they have it broken out and he should have gotten a third place trophy. Alex and James didn't get to stay for the awrds ceremony, Alex had a basketball game at 12:00 so they had to rush back to Cabot.
Quite a few of our Cruiser's won trophys :) Jane 2nd place grandmasters, Gary 1st place grandmasters, Bailey 2nd 25-29, there was a problem with the 35-39 female results, Gabby was announced as the second place but might actually have been third or fourth and Jackie was right behind her. Josh won his age group and Russ was third in his age group. I don't think I left anyone out???
It was a great race and I think everyone was really happy with their results. Oh I almost left out Caitlyn C. she won 1st in her age group! All the C. kids won trophys in the the one mile run.

After the race We met Jackie, Phil and the kids at I-hop, Judy and Steve also joined us. Breakfast afterwards is always my favorite part of any race!!!!

Arland and I spent a quite day at home yesterday... it was nice not to have to fight the Valentines day crowds!!