CVS Caremark Downtown 5K

Take eight!

This was my eighth year in a row running this race. The only streak I have going as it concerns my running. I always make a point to run this race, not because it's a flat course, that hill at the end is a killer, but because the weather is always awesome. I'm not kidding, eight straight years of absolutely gorgeous, if not hot, weather. Now that's a streak!

Unlike previous years I decided that I only needed a week to get ready for this one. So with a total of about 6.8 miles of training I set out to conquer the all-new 5K course. I'm kidding of course, I planned on just finishing and not looking like a fool. The closer the day got though the more I began to have an idea. As I had previously mentioned I needed to bring some fun back to running. Enough with the doom and gloom of ten months of no running (oh the shame!) I needed an attitude adjustment. So I started to look forward to the race more and more. At least it was something to do! And though even all my friends abandoned me and I had to do it alone, I was determined to have a good time.

And I did. As I said, the weather was gorgeous, everyone was in high spirits and I was just happy to be out running. I'm so used to running this race that everything was on autopilot so I could just take it all in and have some fun.

I also ran pretty well. I purposely kept it slow, except for the start where I went out at a 6:30 pace until I finally realized that my GPS watch was not playing tricks on me. I kept a steady pace and took in the new course. When it was all over I had run my second slowest time of that race but I didn't care at all because it may have been one of my slowest 5K times ever, but it was my fastest time ever having run a 5K:

as the Freakin' Batman!

na na na na na na, me