Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Racing a 5k

The race day finally arrived.  After training for the 5k with a cross country group for 3 months, I was ready for the big day.  Training for the 5k was tough. My group ran Monday, Wednesday, Thursday in our local mountain trails and our neighborhood streets.  

My day started on a chilly morning with the sun just starting to peek its way through the clouds.  I warmed up with my track and field group that were also getting ready to run the race.  There were a couple hundred people watching, walking, or running the race. While I was resting from my warm-up,  I looked around, and tried to  find the start line. Since there were so many people, I couldn't even see it! There was also a DJ warming everyone up before the race.  A giant clock counted down until 8:00 am and the horn blew the start of the race.

Our race course was a large loop around the streets in our neighborhood. The week before the race, I ran a couple times for practice and felt ready for this race.  After the half way point, I got a cup of water and poured it over my head to refresh myself.  It felt so nice that I sprinted the rest of the race.  While I was running the race, my siblings were at work making a me a sign to cheer me on.   As I made my way to the finish line, my mom, sisters, and brother cheered me.

When I had finally finished, I had run the race in 23: 30: 38 and came in 5th place in my age group and 20th overall.  


As a part of the Cross Country Team, we also had competitions on the weekends running 3k on mountain trails.  Below are some photos from my warm ups and races.  








What do you do to push yourself to achieve?