Seahawks 5k

A glorious spring day for a first race after a quarter of knee woes. K has always wanted to do this 12k race and finally we were able to put it on the schedule. I really had wanted to run the 12k but the knee woes of the quarter meant it would be smarter to just race the 5k distance. I could say that I would run the 12k distance easily but i would be lying and I'm not ready to race anything longer. 

We met up with some Ragnar Relay friends and enjoyed all the high energy. The Seahawks did win that football thingy this year, ya know. 

I just wanted to race and get an idea of where I am right now. I've run a couple weeks at almost 30 miles and just started adding in a bit of faster running this past week. Knee is doing well when I'm not abusing it in the garden. 

I did run in the wig and skirt and got a lot of laughs. I also think i was probably one of the frist runners dressed in a costume across the line.  I have my priorities after all.

My main hope was to run under 24 minutes. I was hoping i was going to run somewhere between 7:20-7:30 pace and settled into the first mile (after fighting to get to the front of the lined up racers) at 7:28. This felt good. Second mile i started passing people and felt very much all by myself. 7:33. I could see another woman ahead and gradually pulled up and passed her. And I could really feel that i just didn't have a lot of oomph towards the end. I haven't been running any faster paces and that lack of strength showed. The final turn to the long stretch before the finish was much longer than i expected since I misjudged where we were on course. That woman passed me back but i tried to keep in reach. 

Finally, we hit the final turn to the last 100 yards and I was happy to be done and well under 24 minutes.  Good enough for 2nd in Age Group and everything felt good. I even came home and weeded for a couple hours.  

Very fun event with a flat 5k and enjoyable 12k course. I saw three bald eagles this morning as well! There were something like 8,000 finishers between the two events so be prepared for lots of people all trying to get into a relatively small area albeit with lots of available parking.