Bunny Hop 5K Race Report

*** I was not writing my blog when I did this race, but I thought I would like to put up a report for the races I did before my blog was out ***

Race start - 8 am
Temperature - 29 degrees
Time - 36:17

This was the race I signed up for a few weeks after starting to run.  I knew myself well enough to know that I needed a goal to shoot for to keep me motivated and paying money for a race was going to make me want to at least go and run it.  I picked this race because I thought "very end of March, it should be decent out, at least it won't be freezing cold." WRONG!

I work up and started getting ready.  In the midst of my preparations, I looked out the window and saw frost on the ground!  Frost and I'm getting to run 3.1 miles.  I got dressed in my running pants, race shirt and long underwear shirt (I didn't have anything else long sleeved to wear under my running clothes).  I did not  look at the temperature before I left (it was not going to be pretty and knowing for a fact how cold it was would only make things worse).

I did not run with the bunny ears which was a good choice because I saw several pairs of them left along the course.

I had three goals for this race. An A goal is what I could accomplish on a perfect day, a B goal is something I would be proud of and a C goal would be something I knew for a fact I could do going in (barring insane circumstances).

A Goal - finish with an average pace of 12:00 miles or less (37:17)
B Goal - finish in less than 40 minutes
C Goal - finish the race (since it was my first planned race, finishing it in a of itself would be good)

My husband did get to come with me to this race (he was out of town for my first race) so he drove me over to the park where the race was starting.  We got there super early, like 7:15 and I had already picked up my packet so after I used the Port-O-Potty, we sat in the truck until we saw people heading to the starting line.

By this point I was really nervous and a little bit concerned about the weather and wanting to do good since I had an actual cheering section this time.  I saw quite a few younger kids around and I told myself that if they could do this, so could I.  We started right on time and for the first mile or so I paced a guy who was running with his dog.  I didn't walk at all until after a mile or so in, which was a really big deal for me!  It was an out and back course, so once I hit the turn around I knew it was half over so I worked a little bit harder on the way back.

My husband stalked me on the course.  I actually noticed him this time which is why I was smiling.

I had made myself a playlist and knew where (musically) I wanted to be at each mile marker so when I hit the 3 mile mark, I knew I was way ahead of my B goal (over a song ahead) and close to my A goal.  So I took 3 seconds to switch to the last song on playlist that I intended to sprint to (Human by Manafest) and took off!  I crossed the finish line when it said 36:52 so I knew I had gotten my A goal, the only question is by how much based on the official time. My official time ended up being 36:17!  I beat my A Goal by a whole minute!

Post Run!