I ran my first road race this weekend and it was awesome!! I started walking back in cold February with my friend Amy, and we have progressed from there. We are currently running routes from 2-4 miles about 4 times per week. We actually ran our longest distance last Saturday and made it 5 miles! I know I used to run a lot for soccer, but going out and running straight distance is so much different than playing a sport!! Plus, I haven't played a soccer game in almost 10 years!! And have had two kids along the way:)
Here are my running girls!! Amy in the middle lives a few houses down in my neighborhood which has made it super easy to walk outside and get our workouts in after we get kids in the bed. I am so thankful we moved where we did!! Stephanie on the right also lives close and she is great at pushing me to run farther and get into more adventuresome sports.....but more on that later! This was our cute picture before the race. We ran one called Hot Summer Nights, which happens to be a very tough 4 mile race in the dead heat of the Arkansas summer. The race started at 6:30 pm in the scorching heat. Lucky for us, we had an awful heat wave come through all week which happened to break late Thursday and into Friday. It was warming back up by race time, but it was only 93 rather than 104 like we had been practicing in all week! We are back under an excessive heat warning again today to start off the week, so I am so thankful for that wonderful little "cold" front for the actual race!
Anyway, here I am cruising to the finish line. (look dad, I even passed a man!!, and no , he is not crippled!!) We ran about 3.7 miles through town and neighborhoods, and then had to turn off-road and finish the last .3 mile through a huge field. It was awful! The grass was thick and soft and the ground was super lumpy and uneven, so it was much slower going than running on the road. I am a freak of nature and no matter how tired I am at the end, I can always sprint to the finish line, which I did. I came in one second behind Amy and finished with a time of 39:03. I averaged a 9:46 mile throughout the race which wasn't bad. I usually run about a 10 minute mile in practice, so I was glad to pick it up for the race. I hit the first mile at 9:01, but there were two killer hills in miles two and three which slowed me down quite a bit. I did manage to run every step of the way, which was one of my goals. The second goal was to cross the finish line, and not in an ambulance!!! So I was two for two on my goals!!! I run in the 30-34 year old age group, and finished 5th out of 21. I was 94th overall (men and women) out of 218 runners, so at least I was in the top half.
A picture of me and my boys after I finished the race. Tyson was so excited to see me run, since he knows I "go running," but doesn't really know what that means!! It was so precious to see him jumping up and down on the side of the road waving when I ran by. I am so thankful to have such a supportive family as I work hard at this new part of my life. So here are the stats. Since I started walking in February I have lost 29.2 pounds! I am currently 20 pounds
lighter than the day I
got pregnant with
Tyson!!! I am about 12 pounds less than when I got pregnant with Jace. I am wearing clothes I haven't fit into since the first year or so after we got married, which was over 8 years ago, and two kids!! Needless to say I am pretty happy with the results, and hoping to keep it up. I don't really care how much I lose at this point, just wanting to get in better shape and start placing in some races. I really enjoyed the race and have a long list of events I am hoping to participate in between now and the end of the year:)
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