Snuggling up for Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day, I decided to cozy up with about 1,500 other people in Virginia, who were crazy enough to run a 5k race in the freezing cold weather. It was by far the coldest day of the winter - with the wind chill, we had single digits! But each of us got a nice blanket for our commitment.

It was a really fun morning, despite the cold weather. The course was an out an back that started with a short, somewhat steep, upward climb, followed by a slightly declining route to the turn-around. That means that the second half of the race was a slight incline with a downhill run at the end. The second half was definitely more difficult than the first!

We didn't have a warm-up before the race, but I started off at a good pace (for me). My first mile pace was 10:39. Mile two was a bit faster, with the first half of that mile being on a slight downward slope - 10:24 pace. The third mile was hard! After the turnaround, it was pretty much uphill from there, so my pace slowed to 11:15. The final 1/10th of a mile, when I had the finish line in sight, I picked it up to 9:21. How do I know all of my splits? Because I got the best training aid in the universe - a Garmin! Not only can I see how I'm doing as I run, but I can also review and analyze my performance once I upload my watch data. You can see how I did here: My race stats.

My total time was 33:43, which is almost a 4 minute PR for me, and is 11 minutes faster than my first 5k in June of last year! Here I am running down that final hill to toward the last stretch.

As you can see, I really do look like the bottom portion of the running picture that I shared a few weeks ago. But I've been keeping up with my half marathon training, running three days a week, doing short runs on Tuesday and Thursday, and long runs on Saturday. Currently, my long runs are 5 miles and my shorts are 3.5 miles. I'll be moving up to 6 long/4 short in two weeks!

And here is the crazy thing - I'm going to Vegas for my birthday next week, and I signed up for a 5k out there on the morning of my birthday. It is a fun run, not chip timed, but if someone told me last year that I would be running a 5k on my birthday this year, I would have laughed. A lot. I'm looking forward to it, though!