Race Report: Race for the Cure

We parked at the RBC Center and took the bus over to the Meredith College campus around 6:30, picked up our timing chips, and made our way to the start line. Really, we timed everything perfectly - just enough time to do what we needed to do but not enough time to stand around waiting and feeling anxious.

The race started at 7am. We were almost 2 minutes back in the pack off the "gun time". There were slight changes to the course this year (started out on Hillsborough instead of on campus) and it meant more time back in the shaded neighborhood, which I definitely approved of.

Still, it was warm and I hadn't properly trained for running outside under those conditions. I ran the first 1k straight but did a lot of stop/start for the rest of the race. Mike stayed with me, even though I'm sure he could've almost run a 10k in the amount of time it took me to do 5k. Every time I checked the clock, time seemed to be slipping further and further away. I think it was around the 2 mile mark that I realized I was going to be significantly behind my time from last year.

In the end, my official chip time was 36:45.70, compared to 34:48.45 last year. A difference of almost 2 full minutes, which disappoints me but considering I just started running again on May 1 and had only run once outside. Before that, I hadn't run regularly since LAST June, so it's not a bad start.

I think the heat/humidity is going to keep me mostly inside on the treadmill for the next few months but I'm going to try to keep at it so I can run a 5k without stopping (one of my resolutions) sometime this Fall.

The tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. -Benjamin Mays