People’s Health Day 5K

Recipe for a not so great 5K

• 1 concert the night before that doesn’t end until 1:30 (I only had one beer though)
• 1 stomach ache
• 1 rushed morning because someone (of the canine variety) would not go to the bathroom on our morning walk
• Lots of hills
• No training in the heat

Pre-heat the oven to at least 90 degrees (it was at 9am). Mix all that together and you get a rather difficult race.

I ran the People’s Health Day 5K this morning with Laura, Lindsay and Carol. I was actually a little apprehensive when I first signed up because the race started and ended at different points. Originally the website said to park your car at the finish and take a MARTA bus to the start. I emailed the race director and politely told him that I’d never seen a non-loop race that didn’t have some sort of shuttle and if I’d known, I wouldn’t have signed up. Well, what to you know? He wrote back and said there was now a shuttle! Talk about customer service! I guess maybe other people said the same thing?

Carol and I met at the shuttle stop and found Laura and Lindsay right away at the start. This race was pretty small, maybe 200 people tops, but it was well organized. We started out in the front of the pack. Lindsay was dealing with an injury so she said she was going to walk. We all lost each other pretty quickly. I was doing fine until a big hill at Georgia Tech (I think a little over a mile into it). The heat combined with the hills and my lack of training outdoors got to me and I started to walk. After a few minutes, I saw Lindsay come up behind me and she pushed me to run.

The two of us did a run/walk combination to the finish line. I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that we crossed in 33 minutes considering the amount of walking that we did. Umm, yeah. I can’t just up and run a fast 5K without training. I don’t know what I was thinking. Next time I’ll be more prepared. I also need to learn to pace myself better. I’m really good at it in a longer race, but terrible in a 5K. I burn out too easily.

The race was part of a festival in Piedmont Park. Along with a t-shirt, we were also given 4 tickets. There were various vendor booths set up with items available in exchange for tickets. We found the jackpot at the 180 Degree Farm booth. I got all these peppers and tomatoes for two tickets (which were essentially free). I also picked up some pasta sauce at another booth for my remaining two tickets.

Even though it wasn’t my best race by any means, it was still really fun to get together with my blogging friends and do it together. And after the race, we met up with even more bloggers, but I’ll save that for another post.