First Race Today! (Read 774 times)

Today I ran my first race since I started running -- the Father's Day 5k in Pittsburgh. I think I did pretty well with the pre-race jitters... my biggest worry was figuring out where to park. 

They lined up 5k walkers and runners together (is that common?) so it took a few minutes of jockeying to get into a groove... but otherwise, it felt pretty good to be out and running "for real". It was warmer than I'm used to running in, but I think I did okay in pacing myself and not going out too fast.

My official time for the race was 31:22, my un-official watch time was 30:54. It was a chip timed race, but I'm pretty sure the 31:22 is the gun time as well, since there's a picture of me at the finish line with 31:24 on the clock. Either way, I did better than I typically do in training, and my family was at the finish line wearing "Run Daddy, Run!" t-shirts which was a nice way to end it off.

Now I'm motivated to go for a sub-30 5k sometime. Gonna take a day or two off, then get back out and start pounding the pavement again.

Hope all the dads out there had as fun of a Father's Day as I did!

Will, sounds like you had a fun, great first 5K...nice!!!

I wish we had known you were there!  I would love to meet my local RAers!  Mike saw the Ts!  That is so cute!  Well, did you catch the bug?  Are you coming back for more?  I hope so.  Let me know when you are coming to the "lake" currently known as the mud pit.  We can take a nice and easy jog together.  Great job!  Keep us posted!

I would say so... I enjoy running, and for my first race the experience was pretty good. Only down side was that I got there pretty early and then I didn't know anyone else there, so I spent about 45-60 minutes just kind of wandering around doing nothing in particular and being bored. (My wife was originally not going to bring the kids, so it was a surprise to see them there at the finish line.)

Anyway, definitely going to keep running as long as I can, so I'll probably throw in a race here and there to keep me honest and to keep me from slacking.

Working my way up to 5 miles... going to try to push for 4 this week, we'll see how it goes. Slowly but surely.

Thanks to all for the good wishes. NOW I feel like a runner.