Yesterday Rocked!

 I really should be cleaning my house right now but the baby is asleep and the girls are playing so nicely that I'm taking a quick minute to document yesterday's awesomeness.

Two things:

1) Went to my Weightwatchers meeting (finally!) and was down 2 lbs!! It was so motivating to see how close I am to lifetime status. 3 lbs to go!

2) Taber told me about a local 5K just 10 minutes from our house that was going on last night and said I should run it. I was hesitant because I haven't been doing any speed training and it was 89% humidity last night with temps in the mid seventies. Ideal 5K weather for me is more like in the 50's. Anyway, I didn't want to run unless I could beat my last 5K time of 27:11 and I honestly didn't know if I could do that in the muggy conditions. 

Taber was Mr. encouragement though and kept telling me I could do it. He believed it enough that I started believing it too and said, what the heck, I'll do it!

The race was small, only 327 runners. But it was well organized and the course was relatively flat for New England. There was no chip time so I knew that whoever I didn't pass was going to beat me, and that was pretty motivating. I ran the first mile in 8:23 and the second mile was also 8:23. At that point my lungs were burning and the humidity was oppressive, like running into a hot steamy towel.  I saw a couple of older gentlemen in front of me though and I knew I could beat them.  I pushed through the jacuzzi air past the old guys and caught up with a tall middle aged guy with about a quarter of a mile to the finish. He didn't know I was behind him but I decided in my mind I was going to beat him and started closing the gap pretty quickly. As I came down the home stretch Brinley got excited and came running out onto the course. I briefly left my quest to beat the tall guy and slapped her some skin then I was right back on him as we battled it out for the finish. According to the official results he beat me by 1 second, but it wasn't chip timed remember? so Taber caught it on video and even though it's hard to see, I think it might've been a tie. Here's the clip.

Overall I was thrilled with the race. My official time was 25:37 (8:16 pace) which is a huge improvement from my last 5K and put me 6th place out of 43 for my age division. (On Facebook I said 5th because that's what it said at the race, but today the results online said 6th. Either way I 'll take it!)

I'm so grateful to Taber for pushing me to get out there yesterday. It made a good day even better and boosted my running confidence. And I know I'm all red faced and sweaty in this pic but when I saw Cam holding that little cowbell I decided it was too cute not to post! I really have the best cheerleaders ever!