My first 5K

I ran my first 5K this morning. This was my tester race for the big 10K I'm running next Saturday. On Wednesday of this week I threw out my back and had to take 2 days off from training in hopes of rehabbing it enough to run this weekend and also not to damage anything before the race next Saturday.

I pain relieved, iced, stretched and hot tubbed myself for 2 days. Last night at 8pm I went for a massage that seemed to really help out. The therapist said my glutemous minimous was in bad shape on the left side, she worked out the knot the best she could and I left limping but with more energy. After my massage I iced again, drank 40 ounces of water to release the lactic acids, took some Aleve and sat in a hot peppermint bath, then applied biofreeze. There wasn't much else I could do but hope that my efforts would at least enable me to jog the 5K today.

This morning I got up at 4:48am and drank my coffee, drank my water, ate my banana, stretched some more, got dressed, drank my amino vitals and more water and then headed out to Wine Country for the event. Registration started at 6:30am and I got there at 6:42am. The line was wrapped around the parking lot. CRAZY! 600 women and 15 men. My friend Lisa was there (she's a breast cancer survivor), along with Val and Heather (two more 3rd grade moms). No one else planned on running like I did so I was running alone.

At 7am I went to the bathroom and they still hadn't started the race. At 7:04 I started to see some action at the starting line but it seemed that people were just talking and wandering around. I followed the heard of people and finally I saw some runners take off ahead. I pressed start on my Garmin Running watch and took off. I made my way through the pack of walkers and finally I was with the runners. I was about 15-20 back from the lead. I passed people for about the first 1/3 mile and then everyone stayed on pace.

The course was practically an x-games all terrain course. Running from concrete, to blacktop, through a ditch to cross the street, up the vineyard path, hard packed dirt, soft-squishy un-packed tractor rolled dirt, rocks, weeds, potholes and then at the return a STEEP incline. I saw the 10 runners in front of me all stop running at approximately the same point. This part was a hike straight up.

Once we got to the top we were rewarded with awesome views of Temecula Wine Country and the valley below. Hot air balloons were floating in the gentle breeze and the sun was starting to break through the cloud cover from the morning fog. Once you hiked that mountain there was a steep decline to control and then it was back to rolling hills and potholes. I passed Lisa and her family on the return and she was cheering me and screaming for me...that was really great knowing I was running for her. I crossed the finish line alone in approximately 15th place. There wasn't anyone waiting for me. I walked to the car and called Rami and the girls at soccer to announce that I had made it in 32 minutes. I checked my Garmin Forerunner for my stats and it says the course was short at 2.79 miles (this may have been due to the wandering at the start of the race where no one knew where we were going or even if the race had actually started) and that my official time from when I started actually running to crossing the finish line was 29:12.74 at 5.7 mph. This time is about on pace with my average treadmill/outdoor runs of 32-35 mins. Not too shabby for thinking there was a chance of me not even running just 8 hours before the race.

Now, I know I really need to be mentally prepared for just how rough the terrain will be during next weeks run. I can't go into the race with the mindset that this is a flat race.