Chris - 3.1

19:36 - 6:17 pace

Crawfish Crawl 5k. This was the start to a long, busy, fun day for me. After the 5k I have a 9 hole church golf tournament to go play in with my dad, then we're driving up to Seattle with my mom to watch the Red Sox play the Mariners!

Jeeni and I didn't arrive there as early as I had hoped, so I didn't have as much time to warm up as I wanted - especially considering I'm nursing a hamstring injury. I also somehow forgot my freaking watch, so I had to borrow Jeeni's so I'd at least have an idea of my pace. Her watch didn't do splits though, so that sucked. We met up with Patrick, who is a guy I work with that took up running this year and this is his first race ever. So I was pretty excited for him to experience that. We picked up our packets, put on bibs and dropped off our bags at the bag check before I went off by myself to warm up while they did their own warmup. While I was stretching my calves by this hotel place, a young teenager asked me if I was running in a race, to which I responded, "Yeah there's a 5k this morning across the lake". He said, "Oh fun, well best of luck to you" and went back inside. I caught a cold earlier this week and my energy has really been sapped, so I was thinking I really WOULD need some luck to even break 19.

I finished stretching and ran back to where the start line was, found Pat and Jeeni to exchange 'good lucks', stretched a bit more and shook out my legs, then ran up as close to the start line as I could before the gun went off. This race wasn't chip timed so I wanted my time to be accurate. I started off feeling great, and maintained what I thought was the perfect pace for the first mile. I came through at 6:04 and was very happy with that. In the second mile I got passed by a couple people, which concerned me a little but not too much considering that usually happens to me in 5k's. At the turnaround point I was thinking I was going a bit slower, and that got confirmed when I went by the 2nd mile mark and the guy in front of me told some friends of his he did 6:10-6:15 for mile 2. I knew at that point it would be a long shot for me to break 19 because I was really feeling weak and didn't have much power in my stride. I still was able to pass a couple people in the last mile and on the last .1, but didn't even have enough to get up on my toes for the final sprint - I just legged it out. The clock said mid 19's as I crossed the finish, but I was hoping that was somehow off. I definitely gave it all I have though - I just about doubled over after I finished due to lack of oxygen and my stomach being in knots.

I walked back up the road a bit to wait and cheer for Jeeni and Patrick (she decided to just run with him), and they ended up finishing around 28 minutes. Pat sounded like he had a really good time, so that made me happy. We stretched a bit, had some free Jamba Juice, and then I had to leave to go play golf!