010. “Hey, look at those shoes!”

Last year I signed up for an inaugural 5k in my hometown an hour before it started. I ran it on an impulse with a couple of friends and no training. And I had a BLAST.

So I decided to do the same race again this year (this time with a little more training).

My training this time wasn’t the same as I’ve done before. I focused on my speedwalking since I’m still nowhere near able to run an entire 5k without walking. By walking but doing so quickly, I was able to maintain a pretty decent pace.

I’ve ran a race with my friend Chris before but this was the first time his wife Katherine ever did a 5k. She’s been training for months and she did AMAZING.

Since it was a night race, I bought these ridiculous light-up shoes on Amazon for like $15 for the heck of it. I had them set to flash super obnoxiously throughout the entire race and I kind of loved it. Although I paid for it later with sore arches, they were worth it.

I was in shock throughout the race at how good my average pace was, but I tried not to get my hopes up that I’d be able to maintain it. At the end I was really feeling my elevated heart rate and struggling to breathe. However, a lady that had been passing me back and forth came up behind me while I was walking, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Come on!” And that was all the motivation I needed to finish strong!

The course was 0.05 miles short. So my official race time shows 37:56, however if I calculate out my average pace on my Apple Watch of 12:29 min/mile to the proper race distance I get a race time of 38:42. I don’t feel like it would take me an extra minute to go 0.05 miles but I feel like the timing was goofy anyway so who knows. Either way I completely obliterated my previous Personal Record of 41:12!

The best part of it all? My blood sugar held steady (for the most part)! I started around 150 and hung out in the 140s until about 2.5 miles in when I started to drop. A few minutes post-race I was in the 90s but I had just eaten a banana so I knew I was good. It even behaved overnight!

I am so happy with my results and so motivated to keep doing races. Yeah, I only got 121 out of 159 people, but in the end, we all went the same distance.