St. Luke's Women's Fitness Celebration 5K

 

Today was the day for the St. Luke's Women's Fitness Celebration 5K. This event was special to me for two reasons. First of all, it was the first race I would run with my mom, my sister and my sister-in-law. Second, it was the anniversary of the first 5K race I ever ran.
I had two goals, the first was to cheer my mom and sisters over the finish line and the second was to beat my time from last year's race. The bonus was to get a personal record for my 5K time. I met both of my goals but didn't get the bonus. Here's a RR (race report) for the day:
I set my alarm for 6:05 am. The girls and I had planned to meet at Mom's house at 7:15 so we could make it downtown to the start line by 8:00. I got ready and got in the car to leave; there were left over raindrops on the windshield from a shower the night before. The forecast for the day was not good: chilly with rain most likely. Now, Boise has not had any rain in the last 59 days. That's right, almost two months. But on the morning of the biggest women's 5K in the nation, it rains! Just before I got into Boise it started pouring. Not little raindrops but big, fat, heavy drops of rain. The kind that echo off the roof of your car. It had eased up a little by the time I got to Mom's but when we made it downtown it was a downpour again. We walked (quickly) toward the start line, but just before we got there we decided to take cover in a parking garage. We took a couple of 'before' pics and a picture of the street outside.
I was running in a different wave than the other girls so I waited with them as long as I could. Soon, I had no choice but to leave the parking garage and brave the rain. I took a little warm up jog to my start line and tried to keep warm by moving around.
Finally, the gun went off. It was still raining and I was already soaked. You could wring the water out of my ponytail. My hands were freezing. But I started running. The course was very nice. There was a little uphill and a little downhill for variety, it passed by the historic Boise Train Depot, and also took us down a residential street past beautiful old homes and a spectacular rim view of downtown.
I finished the race with a Nike plus time of 28:06, about 45 seconds shy of a PR. I could blame it on race day conditions (it was stinkin' cold) but I won't. I could have prepared more and I think I could have pushed a little harder. But I did improve on my time from last year--by almost 5 minutes--and I did have fun. It was great to see my mom and sisters finish their first 5K race. It was also great to know that we weren't going to let a little(or a lot of)rain stop us. We are already planning for our next Dickson Girls' race--it should be the Barber to Boise 5 and 10K in October.
We'll all continue to train and I will post a RR to let you all know how we do then!