a 5k and a song

This has been one of the harder ones so far, but it was awesome!

✔ 21. Run a 5k with B - use the Couch to 5k training plan to do it

If you just recently joined me here, or if you forgot, my first few weeks of Couch to 5k were summed up in this post.  Around Week 6 of my 9-week plan, I started getting shin splints.  The shoes I had been running in were ancient and didn't have much support to begin with.  I found some new shoes, but because of the extra support, they weighed more than the old ones.  I ran just fine with them, but it sounded like I was slapping the pavement the whole time even though I was running in proper form.  Some days I absolutely loathed running.  Other days, I was neutral about it.  I don't think I ever fell in love with the sport.

Anyway, I purposely got up super early Friday morning to catch the Royal Wedding and also as a way to adapt my internal time clock for the next day's race.  Saturday morn, we got up around the same time and headed to downtown Pensacola to catch the bus for our Fiesta 5k race.  It was a point-to-point race, so a bus took us to the starting line, and we would be finishing near where we parked the car.  We ended up catching the very first bus and had to wait almost an hour at the starting line.  B was whining about it the whole time.

I didn't bring my camera--this was taken after we got home and I'd taken off my knee brace by then.

However, it was a beautiful morning and a beautiful course that was mostly downhill.  I had a few goals for this race: not walking, not puking or feeling like I needed to do so (this happened the last time I attempted a 5k because I hadn't trained at all).  Another goal was to finish with B and maybe even hold his hand across the finish line.  You can imagine how he felt about the latter.  He picked up some speed on the downhill part, so I had to work really hard to catch up.  At the very end of the course, a 9-year-old boy bolted with the two of us to the finish line.  I was sprinting against B, and he was trying not to beat the kid and have everyone hate him.  I did grab his hand as I finished slightly ahead, so it kinda looked like I was dragging him.  We both finished with a time of 31:08, coming in 161st and 162nd.  It definitely helped that all the really fit people were running in the 10k and not the 5k part!  Also, the first 10k finisher did not beat us, so that's a triumph right there (his time was 37:26).

My sweet race bib, with electronic timing strips on the inside.  Fancy.

As much as I thought I hated running, I felt AWESOME after this race.  We even got free bagels from Bagelheads!  I think I might even do some more this summer, if I really love the charity where the money is going.  I may not do them with B though, since he'll just whine the whole time.  His co-worker likes to run though, so maybe I'll just do them with her.

So this weekend also included my two choir concerts.  While we were waiting around for the start of the race, I started singing one of our songs to myself.  It's called "Guide My Feet," and I know it's cheesy that I took a metaphor completely literally like that.  But I convinced B to record it yesterday, so here's the Gulf Coast Chorale singing it.  I'm toward the top left, behind everyone, the youngest-looking one in the group.



(Yes, this was at my fabulous church here in P-cola.  I love the color, and the acoustics were impressive.  It's hard to find a Catholic church built in the past 15 years that isn't stark white.  Also, B was sitting too close to get the whole group in the picture. This is about half of us.)