No Boundaries and the Race for the Cure

So, for the past few months I have been doing a Tuesday night "couch to 5k" run with a group of folks through Fleet Feet. The idea is that they take a group of people, all flavors of runners, from people who have never run before to people like us who run frequently, but want to get a little more out of their run and train them for a specific 5k run. My goal was to make an attempt to run a whole 5k (no intervals). The program was 10 weeks of training that ended with the Race for the Cure. Mom did a similar training in the Spring time for Elie's Run and she got a lot out of it, so Mom and I decided to do this one together. All in all, it was a great experience. We met lots of new people, some of whom we are already planning on running with again, and I feel we really took our running to the next level. The training consisted of starting with a really low interval (I think it was 2:2) and eventually build up to a 4:1 or wherever you could go...I have found myself skipping intervals on my training and recreational runs lately, so I decided that I was going to do my best to run the whole thing without sacrificing time.

Race for the Cure was held in Brentwood this year, a nice change to the madness that was downtown Nashville last year. They set up the Race Village just off one of the main streets in 'downtown' Brentwood. The course was a quick loop through the business parks. It was mostly flat with one hill at the end that we were already accustomed to because we ran it a few weeks ago as a party of our Saturday marathon training. Claire, Mom, Gordon, and myself arrived early so that I could get my chip. Mom decided that she wanted to walk with Claire and Gordon, so she went with them to get breakfast while I went to scope out the village. We took a few pics before we split up.

Mom, Claire, and Myself



After a brisk jog up a hill to get my blood moving, I followed the music to the Race Village. As of that point, there was not a ton of people there...some of the vendors were still putting their booths together. I did not take any pictures of the village, however I did take some of the Start and Finish lines...





Anyhow, I got my bib and chip and ran into Courtney, another one of the No Boundaries runners. We walked through the Village and I attached my tag to my shoe (or did I), apparently I did not do too good of a job because when we found the Fleet Feet tent, I looked down and my DTAG was gone. No worries, I always have my watch. We hung out at the tent until Claire, Mom, and Gordon showed up. At about 15 minutes until gun, we did some warming up a quick jog up and down the street and then into the chute we go.

Claire took this of me while we were waiting...



After what seemed like forever, they started us. They started the timed runners first (us, what???) and then they were going to wait a bit until they released everyone else to give us a little breathing room on the course. The first mile was easy, almost too easy. I looked at my watch and turned to Courtney and asked her "Have you ever run a 10 minute mile before?"...she responded with a "No", I then got to tell her, "Yeah, you have"...I showed her the watch which read 10:12 just after mile 1. We just couldn't slow the pace down. Which in a longer race could hurt us, but since this was just 3 miles, we went with it. At around 1.5 we decided to take a 30 second recovery, then we went right back at it. Our pace bounced between 10 and 11 minute miles. At Mile 2, we were around 21:45, still not too shabby. A super fast 3rd mile would put us under 30... that would have been incredible, but there was that dumb hill. Really the only hill on the course, we walked it... we were so far ahead of our PR's that it was fine. We crested the hill and Courtney told me to go ahead... I felt bad about it, because I am accustomed to running with Mom and we generally do not leave each other behind, but I went ahead...I ran a sub 10 minute pace for the last half mile. Even dipped under 8 for a spell. I finished strong at 33:55, which is a 10:37 pace. I am very happy with this for several reasons.

1. It is a PR, yeah yeah, the last time I ran a 5k was last December and I thought I was going to die afterwards, but a PR is a PR. You can quote me on that.

2. We could have ran the whole thing. No doubt in my mind. I felt fast and I mean cheetah fast.

3. I saw the front of the pack. But not from the sidelines...like, when we finished our first half mile, we still could see ahead where there was no one racing. The person who most likely came in first was still in view...

4. I am going to predict that in the next year, I will run a sub 30 minute 5k...



As long as I have my magic Clark Howard headband, I can do anything. I guess I should wash that thing at some point.