Winning with Wellness 5K Race Recap

Last Saturday I ran the Winning with Wellness 5K. After achieving my 10K PR goal at the Shamrock 10K two weeks prior I knew I had it in me to PR in the 5K distance so I signed up for this race. To say the odds were against me that day would be an understatement. We woke up to temps in the upper 30's with 20 mph wind gusts plus a chance of rain.

For some reason I decided I would get hot running in a jacket (not!) so I wore my light running pants and my wine and dine long sleeve shirt. It ended up being fine once I warmed up, but boy did the wind go right through that outfit! Once we got to the start line I hit the button to start my Garmin and it seemed like a short time later I hear the race director counting down 5-4-3-2-1 GO! I looked down at my Garmin and the location meter had only halfway filled! I wanted to cry. I then told myself, "You never used to run with a watch, you don't need your Garmin for this race. JUST  GO"

We started on the track and when we hit the second straightaway the wind was gusting against us and rain was pelting us in the face. IT. WAS. MISERABLE. I felt like I was carrying 100 extra pounds running against the wind. My mental game went downhill from here. I have never negative talked myself so much in a race before. Definitely not something that I'm proud of. Not even music helped out.

Overall, the course was pretty flat which was nice with the gusting winds. You ran around a building then there were two out and back sections and then you ran around a different building and then finished on the track.

So I was out on the course blindly trying to PR and decided to get as close to Cameron as I could during the race. He started slightly ahead of me and I ended up catching him and pacing off of him at mile 1. Mile 1.5 brought the first out and back section. Cameron went around the cone and I could see him turning to look for me and he couldn't see me because I was right behind him. The look on his face when he turned around to see me there was priceless!

At the second turn around I was able to count the girls in front of me and see how close the next female finisher was. I was currently the 3rd woman overall and there wasn't another female for awhile. I used that as major motivation to push through. Cameron and I started running beside each other at about mile 2 or so. He ran this race the year before so he coached me on what was left. At mile 2.5 I started to push with everything I had and pulled away from Cam. When I came down the last straightaway on the track I could see the timer was under 22 minutes and I wanted to finish before it hit 22 and I did!

As soon as I finished and was able to talk again I asked Cameron, "Did you let me win?" He pinky promised that he didn't which was a relief for some reason haha. Post-race they had water, granola bars, fruit snacks, apples, and Chick-fil-a chicken minis! We stuck around for the awards and I got 3rd female overall. They called Cameron up to get 3rd place male 20-29 and when he got to the table they apologized and said, "We're really sorry you got 4th in that age group." It was sad and hilarious all at the same time.

Official times weren't posted until late afternoon which killed me because I wanted to know my official time. My goal was to be under 22:51 which was my high school PR time (our races were 3 miles, not 5K). I ended up finishing the race in 21:50 (avg pace 7:03) which I am absolutely ecstatic about!

Have you ever surprised yourself when running in less than stellar race conditions?

That's all for now!