Run4Hope 5K Race Recap ~ 3.10 or 3.01?!!!

Yesterday Dallas (my 17 year old) and I ran the Run4Hope 5K in Rolla, Missouri.  It's the biggest town in our area, but still a pretty small rural college town.  It was a small race, at packet pickup they said 60 people had registered.  I signed up for this race because it was the only one in May in our area and I'm already traveling out of town in June, twice, for races.  It was also for a great charity, a camp for children whose parents are in prison. Camp David of the Ozarks. 

The race start and finish was at The Centre, which is our gym.   We arrived just in time for me to use the bathroom and as I walked up to the building, I remembered that they don't open until 8am on Saturdays.  I told you it was rural!  In any case, another group of people were walking up from the far parking lot, where everyone was, because they also needed a rest room.  One of them looked like a woman in charge and she said they were supposed to have the bathrooms down by the pool/parking lot open, but they were locked.  I was about to go around the building and go in a bush when someone got a hold of the person with the key and they were on their way.  Once relieved, I was slightly confused as to where the start was, down in the parking lot they were setting up a banner that looked like a finish line, but they had told us to go up to the top of the hill to the pavilion.

 (btw, Rey told me that the guy below the banner in this pic ended up winning)

 After a bit of confusion, including people who worked there not knowing a thing, we found out that the start was the same as the finish.   Rey and Savannah  had come along to root for us and take pictures and Rey seemed annoyed, but this was a small operation and the first race they had ever done, I wasn't annoyed, just excited! A few pics and some stretching and it was time!

We both wore the race shirts for the race, if you want to know why, you can always read my post   The great race shirt debate from yesterday!

 I thought this shot Rey took of me was funny b/c I was stretching and my pigtails were 

 dragging on the ground. Gross, Karen.  LOL

You can see what a small race it was.

We were off and BAM, Dallas lost all sense.  He took off at a speed he could not even consider sustaining.  I foolishly tried to keep up with him for a bit, I even yelled at him to pace himself, but he was carried away by the excitement of the race.  We almost immediately started up a large hill (Missouri is pretty hilly, so there's no such thing as a flat race!) so we were speeding up this hill and I was thinking he would be done at a mile if he kept this up.  At one point I looked down at the Garmin and we were running 7something pace...uh...we run 10:30-11:00 miles?  Eventually I decided that he had to run his own race and learn the lesson, so I slowed my pace.  It took quite a bit for me to catch my breath and I had a stitch in my side, which I rarely get unless I'm running too fast.

Around a mile he was ahead of me, but not too far, and I saw him slow to a walk.  I'm not sure he even realized that I wasn't right with him still.  LOL.  He walked until I got to him and then started running with me again, this time at a SANE pace.  I had just about "settled into it" (my mantra) when we hit another hill.  We chugged up it slowly and tried to catch our breath going down before hitting another hill.  I felt like I was running in slow motion and almost busted out laughing when I thought what it must look like!  At the top of the hill there was water and I got a bit of it in my mouth and the rest all over my shirt, Naturally!  It was a huge downhill coming, and I knew the rest of the route, so I sped up a bit as we headed down the hill.  I knew there was one more large hill to climb, so I wanted to catch some speed going downhill.  I'm not the best downhill runner though.

Rey was at the top of that last hill taking photos, he took tons, but here's one where we were halfway down the hill.  Where this picture ends in the right corner, was the last hill going UP. 

It was funny to see Rey trying to run to get farther up to take more shots of us.  We hit the hill and naturally I was checking the Garmin.  I told Dallas were were going to PR if we could just keep it up!

This is where I want to just bolt to the finish, but they made it pretty hard for me.  Rey took this next shot while we were running, but it shows how they had us come into the finish.  See that small path on the right by the tree?  We came running down a hill by this tree, had to make a 90 degree turn onto that little path, run down it, then turn again 90 degrees and run DOWN a huge slope into the finish.  Ok, I don't know about you, but I cannot sprint downhill.

I felt bad b/c Dallas turned to me like at our last race and half grinned like he wanted to race

to the finish, but there was no way I could down this hill. 

Then, to add insult to injury, the people/photographer stood and sat right in FRONT of the finish line to take our photo...but I had to slow down so I didn't run into them!  LOL. 

I stopped my garmin and I heard her call out my time as 5 seconds more, which made sense b/c they just started the clock when they blew the horn, Dallas & I were about 5 seconds behind.  I was pretty excited b/c I was pretty sure I PR'd.  I KNEW I PR'd from our first 5K last fall (35:38), but wasn't sure about my virtual 5K I ran last month.  I sat down and looked it up and sure enough, 1 second faster! 31:51,  I'll take it!  (or will I???...)

We had some water and talked about how less worn out we were than our last 5K.  Rey took our pic, it looks like I was sweating all over but really that was the water I spilled!

We headed out as I had a petsit to get to.  As I was taking a picture of my Garmin to save my time/pace I noticed something off... OMG.  My Garmin said we had run 3.01 miles.  WHA???? Guess someone does not know how far a 5K is.   My pace was still recorded at 10:34, and I'm happy with that because I'm improving but I can't really have a PB if I didn't even get to 3.1!  I know we were faster than our last 5K and that's got to be enough for this race.  There will be many more!

So, no official personal best for me, and I know it sounds like a lot went wrong but I really didn't have high expectations for this run.  It was a first time race put on by a charity that didn't know much about races, apparently not even enough to know what the distance of a 5K is! LOL. I guess they could have just measured wrong.  Either way, the thing is, I just ran it for fun.  I ran it because I love to run, I ran it because it's training for my 10K and my half, and because I enjoy running with my son.  We had a great run, everyone was in great spirits, and it was for a good cause.  We had a blast!

As a treat, when I got home, my Virtual 5K medal had arrived from the Pink Elephants on Parade 5K I did in April!  Totally cute bling!

I hope everyone has a fabulous Mother's Day!