My first 5K experience

Today, I ran in my first 5K.  It was a great experience and I am so glad that I was able to do it.  It was a great day for running because it wasn't too cold.  It was overcast and drizzling which wasn't a big deal.  We all thought there was going to be a downpour from what we saw online and heard from other people.

I was up at 5:55am cause my ride was coming around 6:15am.  I don't eat or shower before I run.  I have noticed that if I eat before I run I get cramps--yes, I got cramps today, but I'll talk about that a little later.  The race started at 7:50am.  We got up early to make sure we got a good parking spot.  There was a total of 8 women in the group that I ran with.  There were 567 people in the 5K.  I was so excited but nervous about this 5K.  I had never done anything like this and didn't know what to expect.  There were a few women in the group who had done a 5K in the past so I gleaned as much knowledge from them as I could.  But, as we all know, until you actually do something yourself, you really can't experience something through someone else.

As soon as I started running, the cramps started. =(  I was so bummed, but I kept running anyway.  I ran through the 1st mile with the cramps and then walked a little through the 2nd mile.  Toward the last half of the second I ran again, trying a breathing technique that was working a little.  My cramps subsided a little.  I had to walk again a little bit into the third mile.  I knew that I wanted to finish running the 5K no matter how bad the cramps got and that's exactly what I did.  What was really cool, was there were people along the route that were cheering everyone on and that definitely helped to motivate me.

I think I siked (sp?) myself out way too much for this because that was the one thing I worried about was those stupid cramps.  And guess what? I got them.  I probably worried too much about that and not wanting to walk at all, but just run the entire thing.  I have run 3 miles in the past and knew I could do it.  But it was the day of the big race and of course, I let my mind take over instead of relaxing.  I have noticed that I have good and bad days when I run.  I ran on Thursday and felt great!  Too bad it couldn't have translated to today.

I know this was my very first 5K and I have been extremely hard on myself today.  I'm just discouraged because I wanted to do better than I did.  At least I finished and didn't give up despite the cramps.

My results for the 5K are 40:03 so that's 12:55 a mile.  I finished 482 out of the 567 runners.  Seeing the results made me even more disappointed.  I was the last in our group of 8 women to cross the finish line.  I am going to continue running and do another 5K.  I've got to prove to myself that I can do a 5K and run the entire thing and hopefully in less time.  I have only been running for 2 months so I hope within the next couple of months my body will continue to get stronger and I will have more endurance for maybe one more mile??

I know I shouldn't be so discouraged since this was my first 5K and I only started running 2 months ago.  I won't let this discouragement stop me though.  I now have a goal to work toward now, run in less time.  If I had let the cramps I started getting about a month ago stop me, I definitely wouldn't have accomplished what I did today.  I didn't give up, I just kept going.  I will keep doing that now.  I will keep running.