Race Report: Spinx Runfest 5K

This was my biggest race as in number of participants and I knew I would be more nervous than usual. I didn’t sleep well the night before with anticipation for this event. My husband went with me (I always like when he goes although I know it’s probably boring for him) and we got there a little after 8am where I met up with the other iRUNners.

At 8:50am we lined up and there were a lot of runners, around 800 I think. I decided to start near the back for two reasons, so I could avoid getting caught up in running a faster pace than I had planned and second, I figured if I starting passing other runners, it would give me confidence and I was right. I have never had a 10:46 mile that felt so “easy”. I seriously felt like I ran only a half mile. Then the course went downhill where I knew I had to take it easy to prepare me for the uphill climb to the finish. I did walk some although I probably didn’t need to and realized racewalking was actually causing me to waste more energy than it was saving.

By the time I got to 2.5 miles, I started to get super nervous about entering the stadium. My legs began to feel like jello by the time I entered but the moment I did, I felt fine and even got this extra surge to run faster and ended up passing about 5 people in the last tenth mile. Talk about being nervous for nothing, it was the best part of the entire race! Needless to say if I actually gave it 100%, I would of had another PR easy but it doesn’t matter though, I wanted to run this race for fun and enjoy the atmosphere. Even with the cool misty conditions, the weather was actually quite perfect for running and was comfortable in shorts and my iRUN tee.

My gun time was 35:28 (11:25 pace)  and my chip time was 34:49 (11:13 pace), still my 2nd fastest 5K and I’m happy with that considering I didn’t give it everything I had. Next up on my calendar is probably an 8K on November 21. It will be my first 8K. I’m still undecided on whether I will actually run this race. It will depend on how I’m feeling and the weather and will decide 36 hours before the race.