While my sweet Lil’ Man continues to snooze upstairs this morning, I thought I’d (asquicklyaspossiblebeforehewakesup) share a few updates about what we’ve been doing. Starting with my most recent Green Hat adventure!
Albemarle Ciderworks, located in beautiful Charlottesville, VA
I’ve been running 5Ks since 8th grade on the regular (and 8th grade is far enough away that I don’t want to tell you how many years it’s been) and I use that distance as a sort of “benchmark” for myself. If I can finish a 5K in 30 minutes or less and recover quickly from doing so, I feel pretty awesome about my cardiovascular health.
While I was pregnant, I did some light running but never pushed myself like I’m used to, and instead focused on walking long distances every day (thank you, Mr Bosco, for keeping me honest to that plan!). So when I was cleared to start running again after giving birth, 5Ks were more challenging than I remembered, and you can imagine my amazement when I managed to get a PR during one of my recent training runs!
These training runs were all leading up to a 5K that I’d picked out with friends to complete as my first 5K post-baby. I imagined it would be a piece of cake.
Pre-race cheesing with one of my awesome teammates!
The race we picked was the Albemarle Cider Works Hard Cider 5K. Running in the spring through an apple orchard with in-house hard cider after the race? Yes, please! As we got closer to the race, some of our friends were doing a much better job of being informed about race conditions.
“I heard it’s going to be hilly.”“I mean, really hilly.”“I heard it’s going to be hard.”
Ah well, I thought. It’s just a 5K, how hard can it be? Apparently the answer was “very hard”! I don’t think I’ve worked that hard to finish a 5K since I started running cross country in middle school.
The first mile was almost entirely uphill, and that really did a number on me. I decided that it was perfectly fine for me to walk up that hill. And in spite of that incredible challenge and how very thoroughly that course kicked my backside, I still managed to make a pretty decent time. According to my chip time, I finished in 29:02 with an overall rank of 87th (out of 1176). I got 20th in my age/gender (out of 378) and 35th overall female (out of 904). I was shocked at my results, I didn’t think I’d be able to pull anything as impressive as that! All thanks to the support and encouragement of my teammates!
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At the end of the day, it was a really hard run, but I am so glad we did it! We had a ton of fun and got to enjoy the beautiful weather. And, to be quite honest, it’s a good thing to come up against something that soundly challenges you every now and again. Keeps you on your toes!
Cheers!
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