Great Pumpkin 5k Race Report

I'm really upset with myself for how long it has been since I posted last! I don't want to be one of those bloggers who posts come few and far between. It has just been a rough couple of weeks both physically and emotionally and I've come to realize that I definitely do NOT have it all figured out regarding living a healthier lifestyle. I seem to crumble when things start becoming too difficult. I understand that being physically sick is not something that I can necessarily control and that I will sometimes have to miss my workouts because of it. However, what I wasn't prepared for was how feeling crappy physically was going to effect me emotionally...which in turn has effected my eating habits (among other personal things that I don't care to share on this public blog...no offense). What I hate most is what a vicious cycle it is!!! If I am feeling down, whether it be physically or emotionally or both, I tend to eat foods that lift my mood (or if I'm really physically sick any food that sounds 'good') and are almost always 'junk' food or just too large of a serving. Then afterward I feel down again for being weak and allowing myself to eat too much of the wrong foods...which then just starts the cycle over again.


Feeling Down ~~ Eat Junk ~~ Feel Guilty ~~ Feel Down ~~ Eat Junk


So I am currently trying to get back on track with both my running and my eating habits. The exercising is going better than the food aspect. :/

Ok...on to the race report. : )

Luckily I started feeling better by Friday so I decided to still run in the Great Pumpkin 5k I signed up for a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I hadn't run since last Sunday! I was prepared to NOT PR this one. The race started at 9:15am and I had signed the boys up for the kids fun run that started at 10:15am so I just wanted to be done before then. I was convinced that I was going to do horribly. I made sure to wear my Under Armour ColdGear shirt and some gloves. Not only was it suppose to be cold...but it was also suppose to start raining right around the time the race was scheduled to start...WONDERFUL! *Dripping with sarcasm* I was still surprised by how cold it was when I got out of the car but I knew I'd warm up once the race started.

I was SUPER nervous before starting...so much so that I again forgot to start my Garmin!!! I had already gone about a quarter mile or so when I realized that I didn't start it AND I also forgot to stop it at the finish. I didn't realize that it was still running until we were in the car on the way home! So needless to say my splits are WAY off. So anyways, I wanted to stop running IMMEDIATELY! I was short of breath almost immediately...but I pushed through that initial feeling and trudged ahead. It started SLEETING shortly after the race started and I just prayed that I wouldn't get so wet that I got too cold.

I felt like I was going at a snails pace and it seemed like everyone was ahead of me. There weren't many people at this race and there was a LARGE group in front of me. I had a woman who kept leap frogging me for almost the entire race...much like what happened at my first 5k, the Huckleberry Hustle. She would run ahead of me a little ways and then start walking until I was a little ways ahead of her then she'd start running again. Around the 1.5 mile mark (seems to be a trend with me during a race) I hit a wall and had to walk. At that point my leap frog buddy deviated from her routine and walked alongside me and we chatted for a little bit. I'm pretty sure her goal was to finish ahead of me and she figured if I was taking a 'rest' then she might as well too. Once I started running again so did she and we continued with our leap frog game until we had about a mile left. At that point she took off ahead of me and never let me catch up. I was so tired by that point I really didn't think that I would be able to finish the race without having to take another walk break.

The final quarter mile took us around the local high school track and I HATED it. Not only because everyone could watch me as I shuffled at my snails pace to the finish, but because it brought back horrible memories of high school gym class. I HATED running and we were all suppose to run the mile. I was NEVER able to make it even one lap around the track before having to walk. Not to mention that I heard the man who was announcing the names of the finishers say "looks like we have the walkers coming in now" when I was about a tenth of a mile from entering the stadium to run around the track! That made be feel AWESOME...but for all my negative thoughts and how crappy the weather was I ended up with a new PR!!! : ) I finished in 43:12 which is 2:42 faster than my time in the Great Pizza Challenge! I was shocked...and of coarse I couldn't just be happy about that. I immediately wondered how much better my PR would have been had I not missed so much training lately.

The boys had to wear their winter coats for their Kids Fun Run. It was so cold and raining by then too. Nathan did pretty good...although he fell towards the end...flat on his face...so he was crying when I helped him to cross the finish line. My poor Tater! Jacob finished behind him. David ran along with him and I guess he was complaining that he couldn't do it most of the time...but at least he finished. I was worried he would just stop at some point on the track and refuse to go any further. *I don't know if I have mentioned it here before that Jacob wears a brace on his left foot and lower leg. He was born with an underdeveloped nerve so he cannot move his left foot. Not even to lift it up for walking, and as a result of the lack of nerves he also has no muscle mass in his left calf. So he has to wear a brace to keep his foot stable for walking.* They had fun and were super excited to get their t-shirts!

My next race will be the 5k that I am trying to set up for World Run Day. I've had a couple people express interest in doing it with me. Even if no one else shows up I still plan to do it...but it will be more fun to do it as a group. I'm hoping that I get enough people so that we can kind of treat it like an event...maybe even have some kind of prize for the first place finishers or something fun like that...we'll see. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm thinking I may try to go out to the place where I plan to have it and run it to make sure I figured out the distance right.

I have lots more to catch you up on but I don't want to have a super long post...and I apologize for not having any pictures. We were so late leaving for the race that David had to drop me off by the registration area and he didn't think to grab the camera because he was trying to get three kids out of the car and make sure he had them bundled up good.