A 5k to Remember

This has been a goal that I wanted to erase from the moment I put it on there.  It was a crazy goal I made back when I was pregnant that my husband made me go through with.  Tyler LOVES running and it's kind of been something we have argued over since I just don't get it.  I'd rather be swimming laps and letting him run circles around me so the fact that I'd even had this notion got him so excited. He wanted me to start training with him immediately but I told him I wanted to have the baby first.  Of course, the baby came during the Winter so there was no way I was going out in the frigid cold.  So I started training in the Spring and it wasn't too bad...I put Adalynn in the stroller and had no problem walking 3.1 miles.  It was a breeze.  But then the mosquitoes came out around my apartment complex making it impossible to walk without getting bitten.  I just didn't have the motivation to leave the house just to go on a walk so I ended up not training as much as I had planned.

The day of the 5k came and that morning just didn't go as planned at all.  We woke up an hour late and weren't ready to just grab and go.  I had been up all night with Adalynn and was exhausted.  But we got ready really fast and got on the road.  After registration and warm-up we were ready to go.  The air horn sounded and we were off.  Unfortunately there were a lot of people, which made it really hard to find a good pace but in all the excitement...I started off running.  That was a terrible idea.  I hadn't trained to run.  I trained to walk.  But oh well...there's no turning back now.  I walk-jogged the whole thing and around mile 2.5, Tyler even came back and walked with me.  I crossed the finish line at 52 minutes and 44 seconds.  I had set the goal of under an hour and I actually achieved it.  I wasn't prepared but I was blessed to actually finish and not be dead.

The moral of the story isn't, "you can slack off and be just fine" the moral of the story is "do your best, stick to your goals, and follow through no matter what."  It would have been very easy to just say, "I didn't train and I can't do this" but I didn't and now I can say that I have done a 5k and I can wipe it off the goal board.  There may be another 5k in my future but just for the fun of it.  For the most part, I'll stick to swimming.