TheRoadLessRun, FueledbyLOLZ & NovelRunner dominate local 5K

This is the headline all of the local newspapers should have used Friday morning, but our impressive 1-3 sweep on the women’s side of the Royal Fitness Community Heroes 5K must not be newsworthy to the general public, at least our Facebook friends seemed to enjoy the photos though. 
335 people completed this race and we placed 2nd, 3rd & 7th OVERALL in the entire race! This is newsworthy if you ask me but the local papers didn’t run the story so I’ll write about it on my blog instead.

Thursday was like any other Thursday. I woke up exhausted from staying up too late, drank coffee, and went to work. Work wasn’t exciting or stressful it was just a typical day. I had planned on running this race but I wasn’t thinking about it at all that day.

After work I quickly got changed into running clothes and drove over to the race. I was expecting the worst because it was 5:30 and I needed to get on the highway to get there. Traffic is usually terrible at that time and in that area but I only got held up for a few minutes and then the rest of the ride was uneventful. I got to the race by 6 and texted Hollie to let her know I had arrived and that I was waiting in my car. A few minutes later She got there and we went inside to sign up.

On our warmup we ran into Liz. This was a euphoric moment because even though Liz and I are friends on the internet we have never actually met each other in real life despite living in the same area, knowing some of the same people, and having similar interests, like coffee, blogging, tweeting, and running. It was nice to know that Liz does exist!!!

We checked out the course and discovered a hill that would be “fun” in both the beginning and end of the race.

At the starting line I felt weird. I had no goals for this race. My training hasn’t been consistent and I have had a lot of things going on ever since the power outage. I just felt weird. I was calm, not nervous and not excited. I’m not usually a calm person before a race, nor am I the kind of person who keeps their nerves in check leading up to a race but this race didn’t phase me at all. I was feeling a little tired and sore after the warmup but I let it leave my mind. I didn’t think I would win this race or even run under 20 minutes. My overall confidence hasn’t been great lately and I had no idea how that would impact the race. Sometimes you just aren’t head strong and I didn’t think I was at the start. I felt like I was just going through the the motions. I was happy to see my friends but I wasn’t actually into the race.

Then, before I knew it the race had begun and I was running. I watched Hollie and Liz take off and I just felt like a rubberband was pulling me backwards until I had one thought–I thought maybe I can run well today. That’s all it took for me to feel more confident. I caught up to Hollie and we ran together for a little over a mile. I heard both of our matching green Gamin watches beep and I saw we ran around 6 minutes for the first mile but I literally don’t remember anything else until the end of the race. It wasn’t until the last 600 meters that I realized I was right behind the male leader and I could see him about 30 seconds ahead of me. At that point I knew I could run under 20 minutes so I went for it and just ran straight to the finish line.

I ran 19:45, 19:43 chip time. I was then, immediately happy and excited to see Hollie and Liz finishing as the 2nd & 3rd women and thrilled to see that we truly did dominate this race!

We all went for a cool down after we collected some fruit from the chick-fil-a guys and then came back for the awards ceremony.  I was so excited that we were the top 3 women!

We took one last photo under the giant American flag before leaving. I hope I can run more races with Hollie and Liz in the future. I had a lot of fun and found that I can surprise myself in a race just by being confident for a split second. I am excited to see what the rest of the summer racing season brings!!