I would say my personal theme for this race would be: unprepared. From the beginning it seems like I just was not prepared for this race. I signed up for it very last minute because I completely forgot about it. During the week leading up to this race, work got REALLY busy and I was needing to go in early almost every day. Because of this, my training kind of went to the wayside and I was not staying hydrated like I should. The day before the race was my friend's birthday (Happy Birthday, Desi!), so I decided to go out for a bit to help celebrate. Needless to say, I got minimal sleep the whole week leading up to the race and I was not as hydrated as I should have been.
The cool part about running is that the work you put in will help you out, even if you don't do so great immediately before.
During the race, I was feeling really good. The weather was beautiful, the runners were full of energy. The first 5K was great. I was staying pretty consistently on pace. Once I hit mile 4, though, I kind of hit a wall. I wasn't feeling that great and it felt like it suddenly got warmer. Once I got to mile 5, I really wasn't feeling that great. Around mile 5.5, there was a water station and that really helped me get a little boost to keep going. When I passed the mile 6 marker, I knew I couldn't give up, only having 0.2 miles left. As always, I increased my speed and finished strong. I do wish that I pushed a little hard so I could have been below 50 minutes, but I'm still happy with how it turned out.
Overall I had a lot of fun running this race and it has helped energize me to continue being committed to my training.
Here is a picture of me post-run. Decked out in Illini gear and hiding the fact that I just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep.
