I ran my first 10k yesterday since Hudson was born. Jess and the kids and my Mom were there at Churchill Square in downtown Edmonton to cheer me on. The weather was perfect and the route was nice and flat. There were 750 other runners and the atmosphere was great. I'd been having a really painful stitch in my side the last few days of running and I was worried that would happen again. But I had heard that eating bananas helps and I realized we'd run out of bananas a week ago so I bought a whole bunch and ate 5 the day before the race...and no stitch at all through the entire race. My knees also didn't hurt, it was basically a pain-free race - I was so happy!
I've found it really hard to find time to run with 4 young kids so I didn't except to do better than 1:10 but about 2 km before the finish line I realized I was slightly ahead of the 65 minute pace bunny - I couldn't believe it! And I decided then that I wanted to stay ahead of him. That was so hard. If he hadn't been there, I'm sure I would have slowed down quite a bit but I kept hearing him getting closer and closer so I kept pushing harder and harder. Here I am just less than a minute from the finish line and there he is on my right, in the blue:
And here I am, sprinting for the finish line with him behind me:
And I did it! I crossed the finish line in just over 1:05, just ahead of the pace bunny (you can see his shadow behind me!)
Before we left for the race, Connor gave me a hug and said he hoped I won my race. Succeeding at running faster than I thought I would even though my legs felt too weak to take another step felt like winning the race to me.I think Connor was impressed with my medal (received by which everyone who finished) :
While I was running, there were jumpy castles and a jumpy slide for the kids:
One reason I liked having my whole family there was for the support but the biggest reason is because I want my kids to have memories of me running races so that they know they can do hard things too. At the end of the race, Shae said she wants to do the 5k next year and my Mom said she'd like to too so that makes me happiest of all.
