Motivation Monday: FOUND! aka Turkey Trot 5k Race Report

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I've really lost my motivation lately and running (heck, working out in general) is just HARD. In an effort to rekindle my passion with running, I signed up to run a local Turkey Trot 5k Thanksgiving morning.  To say it helped would be an understatement.
I picked up my race number Wednesday afternoon & was excited about running - a feeling I haven't had since Disney. Thursday morning I headed downtown (the family wasn't even up yet) and got some random stranger to take my picture near the finish line inside the arena.

My plan? Pee, warm up for 1/2 a mile (oops - I started out at about a 9m/m pace), stretch, do some strides, pee, and then run like a deer with a target on its back - and front :)

The plan worked like a charm. I put on my playlist from Wine and Dine but on shuffle and all the right songs hit. It's amazing how that works sometimes.


 I freaked a bit at the end of the first mile when my watch read 9:36 and the mile was mostly uphill. I thought I was screwed - no way I'd hold out. By mile 1.5 I knew I had a PR (and I was wondering why there was no water on the course - first race I've ever been in with ZERO aide stations). By mile 2.5 I knew my PR was going to be huge but the paths near the river were hard to maintain a good pace on because they were so crowded and narrow. I saw my friend, Julie in the last 1/2 mile, plus a ton of students from GRPS were high-5'ing people near the Ford Museum. The course got really crowded on this section, too, with some tight curves and I got stuck behind some slower runners. Once I got to the blue bridge I tried counting "kills" - I passed at least 2 guys on the bridge and a bunch more as we rounded the corner to the arena.  There's a special level of satisfaction in chicking dudes and no way was I going to slow down. One of my friends always says, "You can breathe when you're done" and that was my mantra for the last 1/2 mile.  I was sucking wind, but I saw some high 7s on my watch in that final stretch!

SUB-30!!!!

My watch lost the signal in the arena & was really bouncing around outside with the tall buildings and overpasses (you should see the Garmin Connect data - it's insane), so the course *might* have been .1 short, but I don't think it was (other people had distances from 2.9 to 3.2, so I figure the course was accurate). I wish they'd had the screens on in the arena, but it was really dark.  I saw a volunteer who I had chatted with before the race and he said "you made it - no one shot you!" He gave me a hug and I headed out to find water.  Outside I ran into a couple other friends and it was awesome to celebrate my run with them (one of them hit a HUGE PR of his own - holy fastness, Batman!).

My official results: 28:15 (9:07 ave pace - who am I?!?!?)
28/94 in my age group - top 30%!
315/920 women
847/1745 overall

I CRUSHED my previous PR by 5 min & 25 seconds!!!!
I guess all that distance work, speedwork & tempo runs weren't for nothing. Want to know how to train for a banging 5k? Train for a half marathon :)

That's one thankful, happy, little deer :)
Did you turkey trot this year? How did it go?

ps - I drew for a winner of my Chica Band giveaway from Suddora on Thursday but haven't heard from her yet. If I don't hear from her by Tonight at 8 pm, I'll draw another winner!