Monday, August 31, 2009

Stake 5k and Olympics

I had a pretty great day on Saturday. The whole family participated in the Stake 5k, and I won the “Wheeler Division”. Of course there were only 3 of us in the category, but still I deserve the gold medal. I was correct in my assumption that I would be one of the slower runners, for example my bishop finished the race in 28 minutes, I finished in 41 min 45 seconds. But hey, that is a personal best time, and if you take into account that the 5k is actually a 5+k, it is almost 3.5 miles long, then I did even better than I expected. I have trained at a 4.3 mph pace and I ran the race at almost a 5mph pace and I didn’t walk, not even once. YEAH!

I was a little scared before the race started because I lost my IPod somewhere between Home and the Starting location. I depend on that music to help me keep my pace, and so I feared that I would get of pace and run even slower than normal. But as you have just read, that wasn’t the case. When we started the race I did my best to sing to myself. I was able to find a comfortable pace; one that I was sure was pretty close to my normal pace. I didn’t feel like I was pushing myself any harder than usual. I felt good. I felt even better when I realized that I had run almost a mile per hour faster than I had trained for.

Today I went out and ran to a different song- “Just like Heaven” by the Cure (yes I played it over and over again) and sure enough, I finished the first mile in 12 minutes, and I felt pretty good. But wait, we were talking about Saturday.

After the 5k we headed over to the Olympics and enjoyed fruit and muffins for breakfast. While we were finishing up an events organizer came over to us and asked if Ken would be willing to be Dunked in the Dunk Tank. Knowing my husband well, I quickly answered for him, YES; He would love to be dunked!

I couldn’t take a picture of myself throwing, but yes, I did dunk him, as did at least 9 other people. He was pretty wet.

Baby J wanted to get dunked too, that is until the next time Ken was dunked and water spilled over onto him. The boy loves water, unless it gets on his face. He looked at his Dad, looked at me and smiled then took off running towards the ladder and started to climb.

We had tons of fun, and next year we are doing it again- well Ken has said he probably won’t run the 5k, I told him that was fine, as long as he cheered for me at several locations along the race course. That is the only thing that could have made Saturday’s 5k better, cheering fans!

5 comments:

Janus said...

Kate, that is AWESOME!! You are totally inspiring me to get out there and start running. I've started a couple of times, but always stop 'cause it's just not my 'thing'. I'm grateful for posts like this 'cause it really gets me motivated to get out there and DO IT!!

Janus

angee said...

Great job, Kate! It looks like it was a lot of fun!

Angie said...

yeah Kate! Congratulations on a great race run.

HiccupMeL said...

You are my hero Kate -- and you look great! :)

Rachel said...

Way to go! And you look so darn cute in your race clothes to boot.