Hardest 5K of my life, but I PR'ed from my last 5K by almost 10 minutes! My coworker is a bit faster then me and we wanted to make sure we ran together, so I really pushed myself to keep pace with her. I was huffing and puffing the entire time, and felt like I was going to throw up- since my previous "fast" time during training was 8:45/mile. Without her running with me, and really inspiring to push myself, I would have never gotten close to that time! I didn't know I could even run that fast.

Eating BBQ the night before is not a very good idea. I didn't really worry about my diet since this was a "no big deal 5k", but I felt really "heavy" when I first started warming up. Luckily I started feeling a bit better after a half-mile or so warm up.

No warm-down. After the race was over, I nearly passed out. Turned in my timing chip, got some water and some orange slices.


I don't think I could have gone any faster- at least not without some speed training, and more runs where I really push myself, pace wise. My coworker and I plan on trying to train together, since we really want to run a half-marathon together, and I know just running with her, since her average pace is about :30/mile faster then mine would make me faster.


I had a lot of fun. The Grape Day 5k was a fun, laid back community event, that was pretty well organized for its inaugural year. I'm very glad that I got to run with my co-worker: we've been talking about running together for months, and we finally got the opportunity to do so. I ran faster then I thought possible, and PR'ed by almost 10 minutes! Overall, it was a great race.