This morning I ran a 5k race...  the Virginia Run Turkey Trot 5k.  It was ROUGH!

First, there were over 3000 runners.  That's a LOT of people to get through.  The start was horrible... I kept getting stuck behind families running side-by-side.  I applaud the family spirit and all that, but people have to be able to get around you, especially at the starts.  I ended up getting off the road and running on the sidewalk until some space had opened up. 

It was cold...  A hair below freezing when we got there, frost on everything.  Cold, dry air putting a hurting on my throat.

My wife is inconsistent.  She's clearly in better shape than me, but she changes her pace too much and makes it difficult to stay with her.  It threw me off a bit.  My secret goal was to be able to keep up with her.  Success - we finished side by side! :)

Hills!  There were two hills that I was not expecting.  They weren't incredibly steep, but they were LONG!  They both were after the halfway point and really beat me down.  They made the finish seem a LOT further away.

We'll probably find another race to do next Thanksgiving.  It was just TOO crowded.  Neither of us liked it.

But, I did what I think was an excellent job.  I managed an unofficial time of 28:49, which works out to an average pace of 9:07 min/mile.  That's a full minute/mile faster than my last race, which was an 8k on flat ground.  Of course, the wife and I were both absolutely done by the end of it. 

The timing above was from my Forerunner.  I'll post the official times when I get them.

Still, it was a good race for us and we're glad we not only completed it, but completed it in a much better time than expected.  We were both shooting for a 10 min/mile pace. ;)

Twitter pals

On a somewhat related note, I've been following a lot of runners on Twitter recently.  I was amazed at how many ran today and how well they all did.  Congrats to all! :)

Update: Official times are in...  28:41 with a pace of 9:14 min/mile.  142nd out of 238 in my age/division.  I'm happy with that. ;)