5k PR!!

Oops...another post I wrote a few weeks ago and forgot to publish...I've got to stop doing that! ;o)

For all you non-runner people (Ha, I say “all” like I have lots of people who actually read my blog) that’s 3.1 miles (5k) ran in my fastest time (Personal Record). This past Sunday was the Komen Race for the Cure. We organize a team for it at work and I’m basically ‘in charge’ of that, so I figured I’d better run in it. It was a perfect running day…50’s and sunny with hardly any wind. I hadn’t ran a race in about a month, so I was anxious to see how my time was since I had been trying to run a little more the last few weeks. I went into it telling myself that I was just going to run ‘comfortable’ and at an easy pace…and that I WAS NOT (no matter what) going to go out too fast in the first mile, like I have been known to do. Well, this is by far the largest race I’ve ran and apparently I get all jazzed up running with lots of other speedy people because I felt like I was flying and I didn’t feel that bad. I was hoping to be around 8:15 minute miles, so when I looked down at my Fancy Schmancy new running watch and saw 7:57 at my first mile, I was pretty pleased (especially since most of that mile was spend weaving in and out of thousands of people)…I didn’t overdo it and I wasn’t about to die…good job! I thought for a minute about slowing down just a little so I wouldn’t crap out by the end, but I felt good so just kept at it…2 miles in 15:51 and my second mile was a tad faster than my first…and I still wasn’t gasping for air or anything. THEN I turned the corner and hit a hill…ouch…hills suck and yes, Toledo has hills. They aren’t mountains, but when you’re used to running on flatter than flat roads, even the smallest incline is enough to take the wind out of your sails…or your lungs, as the case may be. I’m sure I slowed down at the top of that hill and then settled back into a decent pace, but it definitely look me a minute or two to get ‘back to normal’ speed. But, even with the slow down at the hill, my third mile was faster yet (7:43) and I even had enough juice left for the last .10 to kick it in full speed. Yes!! A PR!! Well, correction…a post-kids PR of 24:25. I’m pretty sure that once you become a mother, you fall into a different category of runner…childbirth should at least earn me a little bit of a handicap, right? I believe my fastest ever 5k was 24:11 or 24:13 (something like that) but that was the year before I got pregnant. Anyways, I’ll take my post-kids PR time for now and be pretty happy with it. I would still love to knock off another minute, but I don’t have any more planned 5k’s until a Thanksgiving day Turkey Trot…if, that is, my hubby can handle the turkey on his own while I’m at the race. :o) Until then, I’m going to keep getting some miles in. I officially started Half Marathon Training last week. Eeeeek! There’s this run in Sandusky in December that looks really fun and I think it’d be a neat way to ease onto the half marathon scene. It’s called the Santa Hustle and it starts/ends at Castaway Bay at Cedar Point. Fun, right?! Seems like the perfect race for me (Santa themed, Christmas music, everyone dresses up in a Santa shirt, etc) other than the fact that it’s in December in Ohio…on a peninsula. Brr. I haven’t committed 100% year (AKA I haven’t sent my money in yet) because I’m waiting to see what the course is like…right next to the water vs. in town with some protection from the cold wind off the lake. Once I see that, I think I’ll make my decision…but for now I’m training like I’m going to run it. Holy crap, a half marathon!!!!!



In non-running news, we are busy as usual. These weeks and months are just flying by lately. September was the fastest month I can recall…it was over when it seemed like it had just started. Kaitlyn is keeping busy with swimming lessons and tap/ballet class and preschool. She gets a homework paper sent home on Monday’s that we turn back in on Wednesday’s. Well, this week she started doing it on her own, without me telling her what to do or anything. I thought to myself “Awesome…independence…responsibility!” She knows how to do them as they are the same each week (so far) just with a different letter. She knows her letter sounds so it’s been easy for her. So, I check her work when she’s done and she got all of the questions right…but she wrote her name super sloppy at the top and scribbled all over the top of her paper! Ugh. I told her she’s not supposed to scribble on school papers, that they have to be done neatly, etc. Well, when we turned her paper in the next morning Mrs. Hummel stopped her and said “Kaitlyn, what is this scribble?! You have to do your BEST work on homework papers!” She wasn’t yelling at her, but it was a firm talking to…I kind of felt bad because I didn’t supervise her and she looked like she wanted to cry.  So I told her it was ok, but that she just had to do her best on her next papers. Then, when we got her paper back it said “No stickers given for messy work!” Aww…her first unsatisfactory “F” paper! LOL. Hopefully, she learned this lesson early and won’t have this problem anymore…hopefully!