Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Our First 5K

I am going to have to apologise. I want to include a picture, but we did not take any and the formal pictures are not yet taken, so for the time being, this blog will be pictureless.

Well, I reached my goal. Yippee!! (I added an extra exclamation point just for fun).

About 3 months ago when residency ended, I knew I wanted to get into shape. I found the perfect goal a couple months ago. Now, I want to remind you that before this, I really wasn't doing any exercising. Slowly I've gotten in shape and it has been not too hard on my system. It has been really amazing to watch my body get in shape.

I didn't want this post to be about what I have been doing for the last 3 months (how boring is that?), but I did want to tell people where I've come from. But back to the race. When I signed up for the race, I didn't think too much that it would be in November in Minneapolis. Maybe if I did, I would have canceled, but I didn't. When I say "I", I actually me Aaron and myself. I signed him up too and he has been training like me. So we signed up and bought all of our cold weather gear.

On the day of the race, it was really cold (an understatment). We had our gear and were ready to go. I knew the race was popular, but I did not expect the amount of people that was there. The Star Tribune said a few thousand. When the race started it took almost 4 minutes to get to the start line. Once we got there, we started running. Quickly I felt nice and warm and the weather wasn't an issue. The crowd, however, was. There was no way you could run a fast race. The whole time Aaron and I were weaving back and forth passing people (and getting passed), We had a nice and easy pace, which in retrospect was kinda nice. It was an easy 5K that I thoroughly enjoyed. We took about 38 minutes total, but we ran the whole thing. Quite a lovely day.

Henry got his own race. Inside the Target Center there was a fitness center and they had kids activities. We signed Henry up and there was a race for him to run. It was 1 time around a track, which I was told was less than 1/4 of a mile. Before the race, Henry has expressed interest in running races, but the last race he could have ran, he froze. I really wanted to see him run (or at least try), but we were too late. My parents saw it and this is their report.

All of the 3 and 4 year olds lined up on a line. Henry lined up about 5 feet behind the line and got on all 4s in his starting position. When they said "go" he took off. He was in the outer lane and stayed completely in his lane the whole time. He ran a leisurely race and finished. He told me he won, and he did, but so did all the 20 or so kids that finished before him. He did a great job.

For Aaron and I, this is only a start. I'm not sure what our next goal is, but we'll find it. There is a 4 mile race in Brookside in the spring and multiple 5Ks all around. Right now I am focusing on adding some resistance training. Right now I do feel "in shape" and now I want to feel strong too.

Hopefully we can keep up this exercise pace. So far it's been pretty easy.

Laura

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