Mid-day 5K

As part of some health and wellness and team building initiative one of the divisions in my organizations put on a mid day 5K run/walk followed by smoothies in the lobby. And since a few months ago (after a particularly exciting happy hour) a few coworkers and I decided that we should form a run club, we jumped at the chance to sign up. We've been pretty consistently running once a week and were ready to put our hard work to the test. So half of our run club went down to the mall to challenge around 80 other runners and walkers.

It was a pretty casual affair and the distance ended up being .3 miles short of a 5K. I started off way to fast and ran my fastest 1K ever with my Nike+ watch.

is it wrong that I like winning fake banners?

I settled down after about a half mile and was the second female. I ended up passing that girl at about a mile, but so did two other girls who also passed me.

The course was three laps of the gravel area on the National Mall. While we were running there were 30 or so workers setting up for the National Book Festival this weekend, which meant there were plenty of trucks and people to run around. Add in some tourists and although the course was three loops, each loop brought a new challenge.

only 2.8 miles

I felt myself slow down in the third lap and with a quarter of a mile left another girl passed me and I couldn't find the will to pass her back. I finished right after her as the 4th female, the 9th overall finisher. 

super fast

 My time was 21:30, but I'm not counting it as a PR as the course was way short. Even though I'm pretty happy with my splits.

One of my friends ended up winning the race, he started slow and passed me around a half mile and I could tell he had a lot of gas in his engine. I told him to go win the thing and he did. He won a fun trophy, a old running shoe painted gold and mounted on a wooden plaque. The smoothies were also delicious, but I don't think they were very healthy.

Soon we were back at our desks, all in a day's work.