Sweethearts 5k

Better late than never, right?

Walking into the rec center at 8 am...not sure if I really want to run this race yet!

Mr. Inspiration on the left (55 lbs down!) and my other coworker on the right

Jason took this picture while we were running.  Check out my redheaded friend in the background--so awesome.

Can you find me??

At the finish line...not feeling fantastic, but super stoked about the surprise medal.  Yay!!

Saturday morning I woke up feeling like someone had turned my head into a balloon and filled it to max capacity.  Hello sinus pressure!  When my alarm went off at 7 am, I really thought about just snoozing through it and taking a day off for myself.  But then I remembered my goal of at least one race per month for the year...I couldn't give up on it so early in the year.  The 5k is the shortest race I will be running and I really couldn't justify not being able to suck it up for a 30 minute time period.

So...I got out of bed and got dressed.  I ate a quick breakfast, and hubby and I set off.  We got to the rec center and got our packet and our goodie bag.  They hooked us up!  Our race tee was awesome and we had free water bottles and snacks and a free gym bag...it was well worth the $20 we spent on the race entry fee.  Usually I am disappointed in the goodie bags, but this one was pretty awesome.

We had a few coworkers that had signed up to run this race with us.  We met them and chatted until the start of the race.  One of the people we were running with has lost 55 lbs over the last year by running.  He was planning on running the race at 8:00 minute miles!  Such a success story...I think it's awesome.

Eventually they moved us outside the building out to the starting line.  There was quite a bit of a delay between herding us out there and when they finally let us start running.  I was dressed for the cold so it wasn't a big deal for me, but there were other people running that were just in shorts and t-shirts.  They must have been freezing!  Even though it was a beautiful day to run, it still was too cold for that type of clothing!  Crazies...

We ended up running the race and staying with our friends the entire time.  It was fun to run as couples and take it easy.  Well, they were taking it easy...I was feeling like I was going to die.  I started out feeling okay, but halfway through my body realized that I was going to make it run for 3.1 miles and it tried to revolt.  I was fatigued, but I stayed with our group and had a good time.  They haven't posted our results yet (lame), but my Garmin has us around a 10:30 mile pace for a finish time of 33:30.  Overall, it was a fun race and I'm glad I sucked it up and went.  They even gave us medals as we crossed the finish line!  Totally unexpected...I love the little surprises like that!

Overall, it was a great way to start the Valentine's Day weekend and I think I will run this race again in the future.