The Midnight 5K

Running has been one continuous learning experience.  What I learned during the Midnight 5K is that Ryan has the smallest bladder in the history of bladders.

When the midnight 5K rolled around, Ryan and Heather had been running together about a month.  I had not joined them on very many runs yet because it was easier for me to run while Cru was in school, and they ran early in the morning.  By the end of May, school was out, and I had started to join them for the morning runs.  Still, the Midnight 5K was one of our first times running all three of us together.  We were still figuring out our pace.  And getting used to talking while we ran.  I had discovered that this was a problem for me.  I found that I couldn't breathe if I was talking while running.  As the weight started to come off, and I got more conditioned, I could finally talk and run at the same time.  But at the time of the 5K, I was still struggling.  So even though it was only a 5K, I was a little nervous.

We picked up our packets and still had an hour before the race.  So we headed to Dairy Queen and got smoothies. We dug through our swag bags and found our glow sticks and glow in the dark shirts.  (though I will say that we were not convinced that our shirts glowed until after we got home.  They certainly didn't show up at night).  They also had some glow mouth pieces that we put in for a picture, and then abandoned, because seriously?  Who is going to run with a mouth piece in?

The Midnight 5K was also my first timed race.  The Color Me Rad had been a "just for fun" race.  The run for Talen was just a small fund raising event.  It was exciting to line up at the start and wait for our turn to cross. As the race started we just tried to stay in the top half of the group. The race went great.  It was hard for my body to get used to the idea of running when normally I would be sleeping, but I felt like we kept a good pace.  It was an interesting people watching experience.  There were people there of all ages, including an 8 year old girl who kept pace with us clear until the end of the race.

And there was pink tank top lady.  I am assuming that pink tank top lady was using the 5K as speed training, because she kept running past us at a sprint, and then slowing to a walk, at which point we would pass her.  This happened over and over again.  All three of us noticed pink tank top lady, but we didn't talk about her until we finished the race. More on her later.

Ryan had to pee.  3.1 miles is not that far; but when you have to pee, it is an eternity.  And Ryan had to pee.  So she was pretty excited when we hit the half way mark and they had porta potties.  And I have to admit that I was happy to have a short break.  After Ryan emerged a new woman from the porta potty, we resumed our pace and finished strong.  As we ran, we tried to guess how many times we had passed pink tank top lady.  And we noticed that the last time we passed pink tank top lady, she did not come sprinting back.  Without ever talking about it, we had all been in competition with pink tank top lady.  She had been our motivation to keep going and keep up our pace.

We finished our race and enjoyed our after-race treats.  They also had pizza at the finish line, which totally grossed me out.  I may be crazy, but pizza is SO not what I wanted to eat after running.  Thankfully, they also had watermelon, which WAS what I wanted to eat after running.  We checked the race results.  We were just ahead of the half way mark for both our age group and in the overall results.  In our regular runs we were averaging about a 12 minute pace.  But at the 5K, we came in at under 11 minutes per mile.





























It was a great feeling, and it made me realize that I was capable of more than I had given myself credit for.  8 months after taking on the challenge to run a 5K, I had finally done it.  Yes, I had run that distance before, but there is nothing quite like the feeling on race day.  And I knew there would be many more races in my future!