Women Run the Cities 5K

This race was held a couple weeks ago when we were in a rare heat wave. And when I say heat wave, it was like 75 degrees at 9am and very humid. Oddly enough this race had a 5K, 10K and 10 mile. The 10 mile was canceled because of the conditions…that seemed odd since we ran a half marathon a week before and it was the same conditions and they only told us to drink more. Haha! Oh well, my race was on as planned.

The course started and ended in Minnehaha Falls Park. Not the best place to find parking for this race. Eric dropped me off near the start and drove around to find parking. I managed to find him just before I started. My first mistake with this start was standing in the back. There were a lot, A LOT, of walkers. And they all lined up where ever they felt like it so I was dodging them the entire first mile. It was a bit frustrating. I started out strong and had a good first mile. 

Mile 2 went long almost as well as the first mile. During this mile, the fast 10K runners were catching up to us and passing us constantly so I had to always look behind me when I wanted to pass somebody. There were two water stops in this mile, one in the beginning and one at the end. That may have slowed me down a bit as mile 2 was 21 seconds slower that Mile 1.

Mile 3, the heat and humid started to hit me. I couldn’t keep up the running pace and walked more than I wanted to. This race wasn’t one that I was trying to get a PR on so I wasn’t too disappointed. My focus was to make sure it was under 13 minutes. I barely accomplished that with a 12:56 mile. I saw the finish and sprinted in with a time of 39:30. I got my medal, water and banana, met Eric and immediately went home. It was a warm race and I wanted to get into some AC.