Jack-o-Lantern 5K

I got together with some friends and ran a 5K on Saturday morning. This was the first 5K where I wanted to run it for a better time. I was a little nervous, though, because it's been so cold lately and it is dark in the mornings and I haven't done much running. I didn't run much at all last week, and then I ran 5 miles last Saturday. I actually wanted to run 6, but my knee started hurting so badly at 5 miles that I felt I should stop. Then this last week, I only ran 2 miles on Tuesday and did the elliptical for 20 minutes on Wednesday. That was the only exercise I got - terrible!

Anyway, when I signed up for the race my time goal for myself was 25 minutes. I amended that to 26 minutes because my training had been so bad. I ended up with 25:23, which is the best time I've ever gotten. I was happy with it.

It was also fun because I got to run with these ladies. It was the first 5K for two of them - Jessica and Dawn. They did great and they both ran the whole time. I'm so proud of them - I remember when I did my first 5K and what a huge accomplishment it was for me. The course itself was around Goat Island near Niagara Falls. So it was a very pretty setting, also.

Here we are before the race:

There's me, Dawn Goh, Katie Smith, Eliza Damstedt, Tara Chiapelli, Melissa Lewis, Jessica Callan, and baby Caleb Goh.

And after:

These two pranksters took the trolley from the parking lot to the race starting line, and took a picture of themselves to surprise me, since they had my camera. It was fun to find it.

Thanks for joining me, girls!  We'll have to find a race earlier in the year next year to run together. I think I'm done with freezing late October races :)