3rd race and long run

In my last post I mentioned what my plans for our long run were because we were running a 5k race so we had to work in our long run around it. We got up and had a good breakfast and a cup of coffee, and at 7:15 drank some water and headed out the door into a beautiful morning-sunny and about 64 degrees. We ran a mile up to the start of the race, picked up our registration packet put on our number and put the packet up in a locker and headed back out to run before the start. We got in another .5 mile just before the race start and off we went.

As hard as you try not to get caught up in the starting pace...I did. Lucky we had our garmin and noticed the starting pace was around a 7min/mile. We immediately adjusted our pace and tried to stay steady. We hit the first mile at 8:45 which I was thrilled about because my goal was to finish in under an hour and it was looking good. As the race went on some of the people in front of us started to drop back and I was a little afraid that it wouldn't be long and we would drop off our pace too but it never happened. We crossed the line at 26:34...over 4 minutes better than our last 5k.

After the race we grabbed our packet and a water and headed out to run toward our house. We ran back home dropped the packets and kept going until our 8 mile long run was done. We finished with a total running time of 78 minutes, thanks to the race time.

Our training schedule calls for running a long run on Sunday and the next week's first run on Monday so we went out today for a 4 mile run. Since we are running after the long run we slowed the pace down today to 10:35. This is something we may have to adjust during the training schedule and move the Monday run to Tuesday instead but today we did okay with it.

We started out last August just trying to run for weight loss and health reasons and now we are hooked!! Trying to get better at time and distance and run our first marathon ever!! I can't believe we came as far as we did and I owe it all to finding the c25k program!! A year ago I would never have thought that we would be running as much as we are now. Neither one of us has ever been a runner and I struggled with my weight my whole life. For the first time in my life I feel like I am completely in control of my weight and health. I enjoy chatting with all the great people I have gotten to know on the c25k forums and I consider them my friends!!

Until next time...We will keep running toward our goal!!