Salt Lake 5K

On New Year's Day I walked a 5K with my mom in Draper.  While everyone was busy setting their resolutions for the year, I hadn't really thought about it much until New Year's Day came around.  On that day, I decided that I'd RUN my next 5K.  I figured it would take me a whole year to achieve this goal, and that in 2012 I'd look back on the year and be so proud to RUN the New Year's Day 5K. 

Sometime in February a friend of mine suggested that we do a 5K together.  We looked at the Salt Lake 5K, to take place in April.  It is in conjunction with the Salt Lake Marathon as well as a half marathon, a bike tour, and a kid's 1K.  As we looked at the calendar, it was about 13 weeks away.  I found the Couch to 5K program online and it was only an 11 week thing.  I figured it was a perfect fit.  So we signed ourselves up.  I decided to try the Couch to 5K program because although I wasn't exactly sitting on the couch, I had NEVER EVER been a runner in all my life.  I hate to run.  I'm no good at running.  I just cannot seem to make my feet work in that way. 

In High School I was a competitive swimmer and I've often heard people say that swimming isn't their thing.  Well, running isn't my thing.  I could go over to the pool and swim a mile without even thinking about it, but running a mile would just about kill me.  And then there was the fact that I had a pretty significant foot injury.  I've blogged about my plantar facitis before, but imagine running on a foot like that.  Well, that's why I went with this program, it started out with LOTS of walking and then progressed to more and more jogging. 

I've had a few people ask me why I decided to run when I had that foot problem.  I guess that's one quality that I have which I really like.  Once I set a goal, I'm pretty darn determined to follow it through.  And since I had a program to follow, and a race to run, I just sort of went for it. 

I finally started working out starting back last June after going a few years on the world's-busiest-Mom-schedule.  I started with mostly swimming a couple of times per week in the evenings while Colin was home with the boys.  I also did a little of the personal trainer on Kinnect Your Shape and then saving my feet for one long walk per week with my Mom.  I have trouble with my weight, but I've also blogged about that.  So, I figured that if I switched up my exercise routine and started running that I might achieve more in that area as well.  The results haven't been fabulous or anything but I am so glad that I did it.  I set my goal, made a plan to achieve it, and did it. 

Back in August on my Birthday, Colin bought me the Nike plus sensor, and an arm band for my iPod.  My dad bought me an awesome pair of Nike Lunar Elites with Nike plus.  So you download the Nike+ app and put the sensor in your shoe and it tracks all of your walks and runs.  I really bought (I mean my dad bought) the shoes because of my plantar facitis.  My feet were hurting so bad all of the time that we figured a nice pair of soft cushioned running shoes would be good for them.  Little did I know how motivating that pair of shoes would end up to be.  I started logging my walks with my mom every Friday or Saturday and watching my progress on their website. 

Sometime pretty recently Evan got a hold of my phone and deleted the app.  When I went to run I realized this and quickly downloaded it again.  The app had been upgraded to the new Nike+ GPS and it is AWESOME.  It has so many fun capabilities that the old app doesn't have, and if you don't own a pair of Nike+ shoes and sensor, it still works!  Amazing.  When you run outside, it tracks your route and maps it out like on Google maps.  I was so excited about it that I showed Colin and he started getting excited about it too and decided he needed to start running too!  We are having fun tracking our runs. 

Anyway, back to the race.  So the race started at 7:10 am at the Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City.  We picked up our packets the day before at the Salt Palace.  When I saw that my number was above 20,000 I got really worried but there were really only about 11,000 participants.  About 3,000 of them were other 5Kers like ourselves.  I was all kinds of worried about the parking so I convinced my friend that we needed to leave at 6:00am. 

We got there about 6:25 and there was plenty of parking.  It was a nice Spring morning for Salt Lake.  Cloudy and a light drizzle, about 45 degrees.  We decided to hang out in the car to stay warm for a little while.  At about 6:40 we headed down to the starting line.  There were people everywhere and my stomach was totally doing somersaults.  I was really excited though.  Anxious. 

They did the old count down and we were off.  It took a little while for the pace to pick up, we rounded the corner around the back side of the Gateway and the road widened out quite a bit from there so people were able to spread out and the faster ones could take off.  We turned left on South Temple and up to State Street.  We turned down and went around the Marriott where I grabbed a drink of water.  It was about then that the race started getting hard for me.  We had to run UP State Street toward Temple Square and man did that hill seem steep.  An awesome part of the race is when we came to the bottom of State Street, there were thousands of people running up hill and thousands coming down, all with Temple Square and that big brass arch with the Seagull on top in the back ground.  I wished I could have had a photo of that. Lee was awesome though and really kept me going even though I wanted to slow down.  I only walked a few hundred feet and we jogged the rest of the way down South Temple and back down the back side of the Gateway and on to the finish line. 

I'd done a few trial runs of a 5K with better times but I'm telling you that hill was killer.  I guess I should have done a few more on the streets.  Honestly though, I have NO regrets.  I kind of expected a better time but I feel I made my goal of running my first 5K.  I've had a lot of people asking to run other events and I think I'll take it on.  Who knows if I'll ever get the courage to run farther but I did learn to go for my goals even with obstacles in my way.  My health issues, that injury, and just not being a natural runner didn't stop me and I'm glad I did all of it.

Thanks Lee for running with me, encouraging me to keep going.  I had a lot of fun! 
Thanks to Colin for letting me escape off to the gym to train and taking care of our kids while I did so.  Thanks to Ryan and Evan for letting me get my exercise done, and to Evan for liking the gym daycare enough to go with me in the mornings.  Thanks to my Mom for walking with me all of those years, and texting me during the race!  Love you all.

The Starting Line

Me, before the race.  Nervous Smile

My running partner, Lee and I, before the race began.

A screen capture of my Nike+ GPS route

Official Course Map