26:45

One race done, one more week and one more to go.

My quest to try out a few new races, push myself and drop my times took its first step today when I ran in my first Tulip Time 5K. It was fun because for the first time, my mother and friend Angie came out to cheer me on. My other races were always out of town so I haven't had a cheering section before.


The good I hit a great stride early on, found a pace runner to keep up with and felt like I did a good job maintaining my pace. The end hurt but isn't it supposed to when you push yourself?




The bad For an veteran, annual festival that hosts a 5K every year, this race was extremely disorganized. Between the 10K, the 5K and the kids 1 mile fun run, there were more than 2,000 people that signed up. But no one thought to organize the runners based on speed. In other races, the organizers try to move faster runners up front and slower runners/walkers to the back. This did not happen today. Nor did anyone think to remind participants to move to the sides of the path if they were going to start walking. Pair that with three or four groups of kids and you end up with a run consisting of weaving around chatty walkers and dodging kids who randomly stop and start.

Needless to say, my good pace was wasted and I only dropped one second off my time. Yes, it still is another best time, but it should have been better. This isn't the first time I have realized after the fact that I should have started further up in the crowd and been more aggressive in pushing my way through the group. But I'm still a tad frustrated.

Needless to say, this is going to turn into an added motivator for me to kick some serious miles next week in the Fifth Third Riverbank Run, my first 10K.