Victory!

So I wanted to follow up on my race status since the last post on my Movement from the Couch.  I have in fact completed both races, the 5K and the 4 Miler.  I am proud to say that I was able to run both the whole way!  I am not only impressed with completing those races, but my time for both wasn't half bad either.

Wounded Warrior 5K (aka - LM 5K)

So in my first for real race ever, I was mostly on time for the start.  I managed to get there, get out of the car, and find my posse I was going to start with with a handful of minutes to spare.  No one was under any illusion that we would run the whole race together.  Especially considering some flat out told me they would run the first short bit, be it a block or a mile and then walk the rest of the race.  :)  No hard feelings for sure.  By the end of the first hill we were all split up.  I fell somewhere in the middle of our group and just kept on trucking.  I have to say, the layout of this race did nothing for me.  It was an out and back (as people in the running business call it) which I have decided aren't my favorite, but for this one I couldn't remember where I had been running on the way out, so I didn't know where I was going on the way back.  That's just as annoying because you think you should know, you were only just there.  The course was anything but flat, so that also had some annoyance factor.  I think about half of the second mile was straight uphill.  The second half was at least downhill, but still not enough of a boost for all that uphill.  Haha.

Anywho, the overall weather was nice.  It felt too cool to run without a long sleeve shirt, but really, I didn't need it after about the first mile, but my bib was on there, so I couldn't just take it off.  Lesson learned.  :)

My overall time for that race was a 35:57, which put me at an 11:25 mile.  Way faster than I was hoping for, so that made me feel pretty giddy.  As for my first race, it was small, uncomplicated, and just a way to get out there and get timed.  :)

Mother's Day 4 Miler

How nuts must have I have been to sign up for a 4 mile race a week after finishing my first 5K?  My friend Megan had talked me into doing this race with her with all kinds of encouragement, "You'll be fine.  If you can run 5K, you can totally do 4 miles."  In the back of my head I was thinking, are you high?  Haha.  I am thinking of this from the perspective of a person who couldn't run a mile in February, so 4 miles seemed a bit of a tall order.  I went into this race thinking, ok, if I have to it's ok to walk.  My personal goal was to go at least 3 miles since I had demonstrated that I could handle that without many issues last weekend.  When I got to the third mile, I was thinking, "Ok, cool, well you can walk anytime now and no shame."  The back of my brain was like, seriously?  You can do this, get your butt up that hill and get on with it!   The back of my brain won out in the end.  I managed to pull it together for the last hill and finish the race without walking.  Totally shocked about that, but still kind of an ego boost.  "I CAN DO IT!"

So the overall results for my 4 mile status: finished in 46:49, which breaks down to an 11:42 mile.  I thought that was pretty fantastic for adding an additional 0.9 miles to my longest run which was only last week.  This also earned me 46 active minutes on my pedometer which topped off my max points for the day and earned me a badge of "Busy Bee" for having 45 active minutes in one day.  Winning!

So now I am an official running fool.  Onward ho!