Woo 5K fun run!

As mentioned before, yesterday I ran a 5K at Safe Haven (it was called "Run For Their Lives" harhar..). Had to wake up at 6:30AM on a Saturday and drive 30 minutes to get to the shelter. But it was worth it! My goals were to: 1) finish with a 10 min/mile pace overall and 2) not have to stop jogging the whole distance. And as the results will show...

I far exceeded my expectations! It would have been great if I'd been under 30 minutes, but I am proud of my pace, especially since the route had a lot of uphill. It felt good to see my name in the results for my age group (5th place!) though overall I was 67th out of 163 competitive runners. 

I've basically resigned myself to knowing I don't have good enough joints to run really far distances. But 5K isn't terribly far and if I don't run that often (less than 4 times a week), I can keep most of the pain down (unlike two years ago when I was training to run 10K and thought my ankles/legs were going to fall off every night when I laid in bed). I feel pretty good today, though I probably wont run again for several days. 

In light of how much fun this was I'm signing up for the Thanksgiving 5K in Atlanta (since I will be there and the run will be good to do before I gorge myself the rest of the day) with some friends hopefully. I will probably try to run 2-3 times a week until then and my goal will be to come in under 30 minutes (that's only an 11 second improvement.. doable, right?. 

In the evening after the race we went to a fun event for a club at Duke called Farmhand. Basically it was a huge potluck style dinner in a barn on a local organic farm. We got to go on a hayride and see goats, cows, a mule, a horse, geese, dogs, and a rabbit who reside on the far. I also got to see a cow get milked, which was a new experience! Poor girl...hahahha. The men were all watching the blacksmith-ing demonstration while the women were watching the milking. Hmmmm...

Now because of all of the run of yesterday I've been stuck inside doing homework. Only a few more weeks til the holidays though!