April 10th - 6th Annual Strides for Success

I have spoken here before about my goal this year to complete a 5K by actually running it. I do my fair share of 5K’s but it’s usually walking and chatting with a bunch of women and going to Brunch afterwards. So, I found an online training program, “somewhat” committed to it (took me 12 weeks as opposed to 8) and signed up to run Strides, which is our Spring fundraiser. Now, its been a busy League week - Strides and Class Project colliding together (did I forget to mention I am on the Strides and Class Project committees), but I was committed to race.

I arrived to set up early this morning, met my friends from work who graciously decided to run, assigned Course Marshal’s and then headed out to race. Now, I thought I was going to be in a good position, since I drove the course earlier and knew the 1, 2, 3 mile marks. Unfortunately, the Fairfax County Police set us off in the opposite direction so I was all kinds of messed up from the start. Joan and I started running, and I asked if it was ok to walk if I needed it (she is a super speedy runner). However when we made it to mile 2 and hadn’t yet walked and were still feeling ok, we noted that we could probably run the whole thing. We may have spoken too soon, because not soon after, I had to take two 30 second walk breaks. However, we determined, this still counts as running the whole race J As we came upon the finish line, we sprinted to the end with many of my new friends cheering me on. It felt great to actually accomplish my goal - I finished the race running, it’s the furthest I have ever run at one time and I did it with a good friend. Bonus - we had a great increase in participation!

Side note - after the race, Joan said she felt bad because I had to run two steps to her one. Doh short people!