Watermelon 5K

Back in April I ran my first 5K ever.   Last Saturday I ran my second 5K and came to the realization that I just love racing. Was it my best race ever? No, but I still LOVED it!  I didn't have my favorite photographer there, Jessi, so there are not very many pictures, but I still got me some!

For this race I had three goals: 1. Run non stop 2. Beat my time from my last race 34:27 3. Beat my average min/mile from my last race 10:53
And guess how many of those goals I reached? If you follow me on any social media then you know none.  Not one.  Zero.  Nada.  Zilch.  And I was bummed.
1. I had to stop like 5 times (lame) 2. My time was 35:09 3. My average min/mile 10:55

Now I fully realize that this is not that far off from my goals and overall not a bad race even a little bit.  I am BEYOND proud of myself for running it and finishing.  And as I was reminded by pretty much everyone: I would NOT have been able to do this a year ago.  How can I not be proud of myself for that reason alone?
This race was spur of the moment.  Sherry and I had been wanting to run together and the only time we found we could was this past weekend.  I knew from a coworker that the race was at the same time and place we would run so I told her we should run it.  She agreed.  So we did.  Obvi.
We met up that morning and the plan was to run it on our own.  Sherry runs ten million times faster than me and I didn't want to hold her back. The deal was she would come find me when she was done. And she did.  She got me through that finish line even when the last thing I wanted to be doing was running.  
Like I said I didn't reach my goals and didn't feel like I did my best.  But I finished.  And I did better than most of my other runs recently.  So I have nothing to be but proud.  And now I am going to kick it into gear and train for my next race!