We headed to the near eastside for the Arsenal Tech 5K this weekend!
I worked for the John H. Boner Community Center for three years- 2007-2011 and really love the community there. A tight group with passionate people doing great things in a pretty neat part of our city. Back in 2009, I trained a group of kids from Tech High School to run/walk the 500 Festival Mini Marathon. It is an experience that will always be special to me- read about Team Legacy.
Tessie, the race organizer (a fierce leader in the near eastside community) asked me to be the official starter for the Arsenal Tech 5K this year and I was happy to do so. The proceeds from this race provide college scholarship money for high school seniors at Tech. How cool is that? Out for a Run was a proud sponsor of the event.
After I waved the start flag, I jumped in and decided to run the race. I ended up running faster than I’ve ran in quite awhile. I take my pregnant running super slow and never push my heart rate or body at all for that matter. I felt like pushing a bit on Saturday though. Funny that an 8 minute mile feels more like a 7 minute mile- my normal pregnant pace at this point in my pregnancy has been lingering around 10:00-11:00 these days.
This is a small, not competitive race, with a decent amount of cross country style running through grass, which definitely slowed me down a bit. Pregnant girl doesn’t need to be taken down with any falls. Running 24 minutes put me in 2nd place for the females. I had no idea of that while I was running the race- I started in the way back and just passed people the whole time. I probably passed 15 women in the half mile or so. I was mostly just having fun pushing a little and encouraging all the kids who were running. Lot’s of kids who went out a little too hard for those 3 miles- you gotta start somewhere and learn. Fun to see them all out there participating.
The most exciting part of the day had to be Marshall’s first race. Let’s just say he got a little confused and scared once they started running and everyone was cheering.
We had a lot of fun- Glenn took the weekend off running due to some achillles troubles (nothing major, just being proactive and careful). I’m not joking when I say these are literally the first two days he’s taken off running in over 60 days. WHAT?!
Even though it was a small race-Â even if he raced he wouldn’t have taken the win- our friend Gerry who is super speedy without even really training too much came in happily, looking at ease running a 16:30.
Good stuff all around- the smaller, community races are sometimes the best ones. Tessie did a great job organizing and I know the committee members were hard at work planning too- Thanks Kathy Helmond for helping put on a great race.Â
I think these two had a good time:
 Do you like the smaller races?
Have you run any 5Ks recently?!