Abby Brinkman/Girls on the Run 5K

So today was not a PR kinda day... for anyone. The temperature was 74 degrees when I left the house at 6 am. It just got hotter and muggier. I'm sure it was over 80 by the time the race started at 8 am. I think I'd rather have run in the rain. Although, go figure, I think it's going to start to rain now!

I drove an hour down to Columbus after having my pre-race coffee and peanut butter sandwich at home. So the first thing I always do after picking up my race packet at a race is go check out the bathrooms. I usually need to go visit them at least 3 times before the race starts. The bathrooms here were the permanent ones in the park we were running in, and about a quarter mile away from the start. I promptly jogged over there and found that they were locked. ARGHHHH!!! Are you effin' kidding me? Who organizes a race with no bathrooms! Well, I spent the next 40 minutes fixated on what I was going to do. I even considered trying to crawl under the metal wall into the bathroom (I am NOT a germophobe) but there was only about a foot of clearance between the wall and the concrete floor and I was afraid I would get stuck. FINALLY, about 15 minutes before the race started, someone from the park showed up and unlocked the bathrooms.

Next problem I had was that my Garmin wouldn't pick up a satellite. We're getting final race instructions and my watch is still saying "locating satellites." I looked around. There weren't too many people here. I almost yelled out, "Hey, can we wait a minute until my watch picks up a satellite?" but I didn't have the nerve to do it. I ended up just using my watch as a timer.

So these are my splits based on the course markers and my memory:
Mile 1 - 8:15
Mile 2 - 8:18
Mile 3 - 9:25.8
5K official time - 25:58.8
average mile pace - 8:21

I was dying that last mile and I'm sure I sounded like a freight train. I knew from mile one that I wasn't going to PR so I was just running for placing. I thought there were 5-6 women in front of me and I was pretty sure they were all much younger than me. Then, right after the 2 mile mark, I got passed by another woman that I thought was in my age group. I caught back up with her right before the 3 mile mark. I thought for a moment she was going to pick it up and try to run with me so I just kicked as hard as I could. I ended up beating her by 10 seconds. She was 40 years old.

So, no PR and a crappy last mile but I won my age group and got another $10 gift card to Blue Mile. I ended up being the 6th woman overall out of 70 and 25th in the race out of 118. The race was a benefit for Girls On the Run  - an organization that teaches girls confidence and life skills through running - so there were 21 girls under the age of 19 in the race and so it was skewed towards female entrants. I don't think anyone ran a fast time today on account of the weather.

I think I'm going to try and run outside more this coming week. The race director today made a comment about next weekend's race, the one I'm running in, and said the course wouldn't be as flat as today's course. I might try to check the course out this week if I have time to get down to Columbus again.

Have a great weekend! I'm off to eat some ice cream now.