Oh, what a fun morning!!! We woke up this morning, geared up and left the house at about 8:00 to head out to the race. Tyler was running the half marathon and my little Evan and I, along with my brother-in-law John planned to run the 5k. I have deemed St. George the PERFECT place to run during this time of year! It couldn't have been more beautiful or perfect for a race day! I didn't think I would be able to keep up with Evan and John so the plan was to start together and then let them do their thing (A big thanks to John for agreeing to run with Evan by the way) and I do my thing. For the last few weeks my pace has slowed (which is fine) and I just haven't felt great running but I really had SO FUN this morning. I think the sun lifts my mood:)!!! We hung in the car until it was time to line up. As I got out of the car and stood up, I realized that I should probably make a Bathroom run if I planned on running 3 miles (yes, it's nice being 7 months preggers and running:). Evan decided he had better also so we ran inside to find a very long line for the bathrooms, nice!!! We finished up and as we walked out I saw Michelle gearing up for the half!! She spotted me by my ever so evident "profile shot":) ha ha!! It was great to see her and chat for a split sec! As we were talking the announcer came over saying "The 5k will start in 2 minutes", oh no, we had better hurry!!! SO, we ran up to the start line, met up with John and off we went:). Let me start by saying that I would be PERFECTLY CONTENT to just run 5k's with Evan for the rest of my life. They are honestly the FUNNEST thing to me. It's so great watching your son run and accomplish things. He did so great and didn't stop once! He even ran through the water stop grabbing a cup, taking a quick swallow and carrying on. He is a cute boy and I had so fun running with him. Suprisingly, I was actually able to stay up with them also:). I felt really good! We hung together the whole time until we turned the last corner and saw the finish line. Evan has this tendancy to be able to kick it into HIGH GEAR the last .25 miles or so, so as expected, off he went!! I just hung back and watched him with a smile from ear to ear (oh he makes me proud). He ended up finishing about 10 seconds before me at 24:50'ish. I finished at 25:03 which was a 8:06 average! I was proud of myself! Sorry to keep patting myself on the back but it was just a lot of fun. We finished, got some goodies and then I went out to run a bit longer while waiting for Tyler to finish. I ended up running around some loops just in time to catch Tyler at the 7 mile mark of the half marathon! I also got to see Michelle, Amber G and several other familiar faces that again, brought a smile to my face. I ended up getting an additional 2.5 miles in for the day putting me at 5.5 for the day. :)
For the last few weeks I have wondered where I want to go with running after my baby is born. A part of me wants to just take it easy and enjoy my baby and quit stressing about training, juggling training etc. I think to myself that I want to run only 5-6 miles maybe 4-5 days a week. However, after being at the race and seeing all of the famliar faces, it sparked that desire to go all "gung ho" after my babes is born so now I am torn. I guess we will will just have to wait and see what happens after she gets here and how my body heals, etc!! It was just a fun morning and one that made me fall in love with running, my surroundings and all of the wonderful people that I have met in the running world!! I love it!!! | 