Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5k

Photo courtesy of Southern Nevada Susan G. Komen

I want to get this race report out before the details start to become fuzzy.  The morning of the race, I woke up at 5:30 with my son so I could feed him breakfast, eat breakfast myself and leave the house early.

For  breakfast I ate a toaster waffle with a little bit of butter and a tiny amount of syrup. I also threw half of a cliff bar in my purse to snack on before the race.  I left home at 6:30 anticipating that the traffic and parking downtown would be awful. I got  to the Las Vegas downtown area around 6:45 and scored great parking. I had a half hour to kill so I just sat in my car and listened to the radio on my phone. At 7:15 I met up with a runner friend, and we hung out before the race. It really made the time go by much faster. At 7:45 we did our warm up together, and then it was time to head into the corrals.



photo courtesy of Spy on Vegas. I'm the little bit of yellow in the picture.

I was pretty nervous about this race. I was worried about my performance but, the start of this race always scares me. It is a large race and sometimes with big starts there can be a bit of pushing and shoving. I lined up pretty close to the front and my goal was to run a sub 22:00 5k.

The thing I love about 5k's is that they are over before you know it. The first mile I ran it  bit fast for the first 400 meters to get away from the crowds and to find my groove. By the second mile the crowds had thinned out and the lead women were way ahead of me.  I don't really know what my split times were. I'm using a really cheap watch that just acts like a normal stopwatch.

With a mile to go I  just tried to keep my speed constant. I was able to pick off a few runners but, I also got passed by a few runners.  My allergies were still bugging me but, I was able to run fine.

I borrowed this picture from Facebook.  This picture is kind of deceiving.
The lady who is behind me in the picture actually beat me by four seconds.

I crossed the finish line 21:54.  I felt like I was going to barf  right after I crossed the finish line.  I dry heaved a little bit. After I walked for a few moments I was fine. They gave awards out for the top three finishers. I ended up being the 10th woman overall and 2nd in my age group. I am happy to have placed in my age group. I'm even more excited about getting faster and watching my times get lower.

* By the way my runner friend did really well she was 4th woman overall with a time of 20:44. Nice!