Red Bandana Run 5K Recap

One year and four months ago I ran my first 5K ever. I loved every second of it, but a terrible case of patella tendonitis kept me from doing another (unless you consider the 5K part of my sprint triathlon that I dragged myself through haha).

Finally this summer my knee started to feel better enough to run again. There is still occasional "awareness" feeling, but never the pain walking down the stairs like I used to have. In mid- August Eric and I decided to do an accelerated version of the Couch to 5K to prepare for my second and Eric's first 5K: The Welles Remy Crowther Red Bandana Run. Welles Remy Crowther was a BC '99 graduate who worked at the world trade center on September 11th. He was also a volunteer fire fighter. Using his Red Bandana to cover his mouth and nose from smoke, he rescued many people from the upper levels of the south tower. After saving so many lives, he was killed himself as he headed up to the Sky Lobby with other firefighters to rescue more people.

So, now for the Race Recap:

Before the Race:

We drove over to BC with Eric's mom and Chris and we made great time getting there and finding a parking space. Registering was a breeze, and Eric and I were number #123 and #124... that is our first benefit of having the same last name :) We waited around for a bit with Caroline and her friends. I have to say, I need to get to races early because otherwise I'd be nervous I was going to be late, but waiting around really makes you nervous too!

Then, someone we misunderstood the directions and got to the starting line before everyone, putting us at the front of the pack. This made me nervous too since I didn't want to get wrapped up everyone sprinting at the beginning.

Mile 1:

The beginning was a bit rough for me. I don't know if it was because I didn't really walk first, but everything felt really tight and my ankles were hurting which is SO random for me since I've never had a single problem with either ankle. Luckily, I got distracted by the fact that we were moving really fast and started to worry a bit about maintaining that pace so early. It was all downhill though so I was feeling pretty good when I got to mile 1. I did not have my Garmin so I don't know how long it took me to get through the first mile, I would guess it was probably our fastest though.

Mile 2:

I had a small mental struggle a bit into mile 2, as I started to think about not even being half way done, and still having a massive hill ahead of me. Luckily, right when I was starting to get worried, I saw KATIE who came to watch us with an awesome sign!!!

Perfect placement Katie.

After seeing Katie, I was totally energized and having fun. Mile 2 did seem the longest but I felt really good during it. We also ran into Caroline's friend Ashley at this point which also distracted me for awhile.

Mile 3:

Mile 3 is basically one big hill. A hill I'm pretty familiar with from my days of living at BC. I remember freshman year when I lived at the top of the hill I would try to brainstorm ways to avoid running uphill at the end of my run, and it was completely impossible haha. Either because I was so psyched up about the hill, or because I now live on a ridiculous hill, I didn't find the hill to be that terrible. It definitely slowed me down, but I felt awesome the whole way through it.

Last .1:

Eric and I my goals were to not walk at all, and to finish together- both goals were met!

Yay for us! And no, we did not hold hands while running, that was just our corny ending :) Eric may never run a race with me again so it has to be enjoyed haha.

Our time was around 33 minutes 20 seconds, I think. Truthfully, the time confuses me a bit. It's over 5 minutes slower than my last 5K, and it's even 2 minutes slower than my triathlon 5K, during which I definitely took walking breaks and struggled a lot (apparently I sprinted...and then walked?)

However, Eric and I paid absolutely no attention to time throughout our training and we really hadn't trained on a mile long hill either, so even though I felt like we were running really fast, it was probably just fast compared to our really slow training. Oh well! I felt 10 times better during this race than my first 5K, and literally 100 times better than during the sprint triathlon running section, and I had more fun. Oh, and did I mention I can actually run again? WAHOOO!

I definitely have the race bug back and I hope I can fit in another 5K at least before it gets ridiculously cold out. I don't think I've sold Eric on waking up early for races, but he did agree to keep running with me, which works for me. I should probably dust off that Garmin though... haha