May 21, 2017

Forget Me Not 5K race report

A few months ago, my friend Emma mentioned that she wanted to run a 5K in the spring, and she asked if I'd want to do it with her. There was a local one called the Forget Me Not 5K that popped up on Facebook, and we registered for it right away. We made plans to train together, because we both wanted to get motivated to run.

Well, as you know, the time passed, and neither of us trained! We each procrastinated, and we just never got around to actually doing it. So, on Thursday, I realized that the 5K was on Saturday, and I hadn't run in a long time. I sent Emma a text and asked her what she thought about it. She hadn't trained either, but we agreed to go anyway and try our best to finish! haha.

I honestly wasn't even sure if I could finish it--which sounds silly, considering a three mile run was always an "easy run" for the last 7 years. A no brainer. No huffing and puffing, unless I was trying to run it very fast. Thirty minutes, tops.

Well, since I've not been running, I knew it wasn't going to feel like an "easy" run. Emma assured me that her pace would be around 13-14 minutes per mile, so I just hoped I'd be able to stay with her and not slow her down.

Noah had a fundraiser for church camp yesterday (a car wash and bake sale) and my mom took him to that. Since Jerry was working, I brought Eli to play with Emma's son at her house (Emma's husband was home with the kids) while Emma and I went to the race.

I actually didn't even know where the race was until the morning of! Hahaha, that's how prepared I was. (It's kind of ironic that I forgot about the race, considering it's called the "Forget Me Not 5K".) I saw that it was at an airport, but I knew the airport was right next to a local park, so I guessed the race would actually be at the park. When we got there, though, I saw that I was wrong. The entire race took place at the airport, on the runway! It was actually really cool.


The packet pick-up was at the hangar, and the hangar was open so we could see a bunch of small planes. We'd gotten there about 45 minutes early, and it was SUPER windy in the openness of the airport, so we sat in my car until about five minutes before the start.

It was great to catch up with Emma! Usually, I only see her when there is a big group of us (my friends from high school), so we don't have one-on-one time to talk. She is married to Jake, who I was actually friends with (in high school) before I met Emma. They've been together as long as Jerry and I--18 years!

I was freezing at the starting line, because the wind was so strong. The race was a little late getting started, but finally, we lined up. It was a very small race (about 120 people), but I really liked the cause it was supporting. The 5K was a way to raise funds and awareness of the abused and neglected children of Monroe, Michigan, and to support the volunteers who are advocates for these kids. I like that there weren't any medals or even chip timing at the race, because 100% of our race sign-up fee went to the cause.

After the "Ready... Set... Go!", we started running. I use that word lightly, because we knew we wanted to jog as slowly as possible so that we'd be able to finish the whole thing. We could have walked, as there were several walkers, but we decided to try and jog it.

It went by pretty quickly, because we were chatting the whole time. Surprisingly, I felt okay--at that pace, I was pretty sure I'd make it three miles! ;) I really liked the course--running on the runway felt different from anywhere I'd run before, because it was so out in the open. I was glad it wasn't hot, because without shade, I don't think it would have been nearly as nice.


After an out and back part, I saw my mom's neighbor, Renee, who was walking with a friend, so I waved at her. And then later, I saw her son, who is Eli's age--he'd already finished the race and was cheering people on. If I'd have known that he was going to be there, I would have brought Eli!

The last 10 minutes or so of the race, my knee started hurting really badly. It was even causing me to limp a little. When that happened, it made me grateful that I'm not feeling pressured to run these days.  I still don't have any desire to train or sign up for races or anything like that. I had been putting pressure on myself, because of my blog name--I'm Runs for Cookies--of course I should run, right? But there have been so many changes going on in my life recently that this is just another thing I'm doing for myself.

I used to think that I would want to get back to running one day soon, but now I'm not sure I'll ever have the desire to get back into it. And I'm totally okay with that! I've mentioned that I want to change my blog name so it reflects the changes in my life, and I do hope to do that when I find a lot of time to work on it. But right now, I'm just doing whatever makes me happy. And if that means my exercise comes from riding bikes with my kids and going for walks with friends, then that sounds great to me!

Anyway, my knee hurting almost felt like a sign to me that my decisions are okay. We were close to the finish line, though, so we kept up our jog, and felt great that we made it when we finished! The race wasn't officially timed, but my Garmin read 42:41, which is about a 13:57 pace.


We got a few donut holes and a bottle of water, and we asked someone to take our picture in front of one of the airplanes before we headed home. I was really happy that Emma hadn't cancelled about going to the race (I had kind of hoped she would!) because it was fun to spend time catching up with her while getting some exercise on an airport runway of all places.


I took Emma home, and picked up Eli. After I took a shower and got dressed, Eli and I went out to lunch and then took the car to the car wash that Noah was working at. He's raising money for church camp, so they were holding a car wash for donations. Noah was acting so shy when we got there, and he pretended he didn't notice my bright yellow Jeep that people can spot from a mile away, hahaha.

Eli needed some supplies for a school project, so we stopped at Hobby Lobby, and then went back to pick up Noah before heading home. It had been a long morning and afternoon, so I was ready to get home and relax! I started working on a project that I'm hoping to do for my family as a surprise--it's kind of a lot of work, but I'll write about it more if I can pull it off.

Hope everyone had a great weekend! (I realized I forgot to do my Wednesday Weigh-in this week, so I will just catch up this week).

4 comments:

  1. Sounds like a neat race experience! You look so great!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 23, 2017

    Sounds like a great race and good time spent with a friend.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 26, 2017

    I ran a half marathon at an Air Force base, and three of the miles were down the runway. Also got to run by a Stealth bomber twice.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I just had a funny thought, Katie -- you could change your blog name to 'Ran for Cookies'. haha I think it's great that you aren't pressuring yourself into getting back to running when it's not in your heart. Forcing yourself would be no good -- you need to do what makes you happy!

    ReplyDelete

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