18? Say Whaaaaat?

Some of my friends from the Desert Sharks Triathlon Club (great club by the way, I encourage new athletes to find a club, you can learn a lot from others) put on the innagual SOJO Marathon, Half Marathon, and 5k.  I went out to help them with MCing, and of course had to get a little race action in myself.

I toyed with the idea of the marathon, since I haven't done an open maraton since Ogden last spring, but alas I haven't been doing long runs over 13 miles except 2 back in late June/early July.  I was curious to see what would happen when I got to 18-20, if my body would just plain revolt or if I still had enough endurance from Ironman and the rest of my season.  But I don't love running in pain for almost 4 hours, just isn't my idea of fun  :)  So I chose the 5k which also left me more time to help out, which is what I was really there for

Anyway, a couple hundred 5k runners I believe, a flat course, nice sunshine and semi cool temperatures.  Long story short (since 5k's don't have a ton of details), I won the women's race and finished 5th among the men.  My friend Charity finished 2nd only about 2 minutes behind me......pushing her year old son in their Chariot - debates are still out about whether he beat mom or not  :)   I wanted to break 20:00 (haven't run an open 5k since last year although my triathlon 5k's usually feel better than open because I'm good and warmed up), but ended up doing a little better than that!  The course was unfortunately short, only 2.82 miles, but I ran that in 17:06.5, and after some figuring in the head of my husband, I was on track to run an 18:50 something!!!   SO excited about that!  I've only officially broken 20:00 once, so to break 19:00 and be in the 18's?  So cool!!  I'm glad I was able to be excited about it as sometimes I don't give results the excitement I should.

The next 4 hours were spent welcoming finishers of the half and full marathon in, including my good friend Jonathan who just finished his 78th marathon in 3:50 I believe.  It was fun to watch people cheer their family in, fun to watch people smile and be excited to be finishing - or just being done, that was probably it  :)  I also announced awards, and have to say it was a little strange to announce my own...  The race directors faced a few challenges, but what race doesn't?  They did a great job and should do even better next year.  Check them out (think they're moving to October) for some Saturday morning fun!