This is the 3rd annual Stand Up 5K. It benefits the Austin area Anti-Defamation
League in their efforts to reduce and eventually end bullying in our
schools. This is something that is “near
and dear,” as they say, to me and my heart.
You see, I was bullied when I was young.
I wasn’t popular. I wore
hand-me-down and thrift shop clothes. I had
no idea how to do my hair all fancy like the popular girls did. I didn’t have all the cool new toys. My family wasn’t well off. By the time I was in high school, I had
stopped answering to my name because the other kids were always talking to one
of the popular girls named Sara in our class, never to me. I had gotten tired of them laughing at me
when they hollered out “SARA!” to one of the popular girls and I turned around
and they thought it was funny that I could think that they would possibly want
to get MY attention and talk to ME. Yea,
right. Anyway, I believe in this program
and I believe it is important.
There was a snafu with the information provided about packet
pickup. Packet pickup was available on
the Thursday and Friday before the race at the event location, but it was also
available at Rogue Running for one day as well, at their downtown location. This was very convenient for me as I work
downtown. The email I received said the
Rogue pickup was on Friday. Wrong. It was on Thursday. So I had to drive all the way out to the
event location and speed back downtown so I wasn’t late for work. Made it with 5 minutes to spare. Ugh. I
was less than happy about this. But, as
my packet pickup was very hurried as I let the lady know that I was in a race
to make it to work on time, I was afraid my name and bib number wouldn’t get
properly connected as they were assigning the bibs when you came to pick up
your packet. They were not
preassigned. Since I was in such a
hurry, she just had me write down my name and then scribbled my bib number down
next to it. I found out after I got to
work that I could have waited until the morning of the event to get my
packet. Oh well. I did really want to do the traditional “flat
runner” and I prefer to do those with my bib in the picture. I made one of my "Team Sheriff" tech shirts into a tank top and I like it!
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I am happy to report that we finally have a logo, after 3
years. Haha. But, I’m really happy with this logo. It’s pretty awesome.
A little back story about how I was feeling the morning of
the race. Wednesday and Thursday nights I
worked 16 hour shifts. So, that’s about
5.5 hours of sleep Thursday morning and Friday morning. Then, Friday night, I had anxiety issues
(probably due to too much caffeine) and couldn’t go to sleep so I’m sure I again
only got about 5.5 hours of sleep. So, I
was pretty tired Saturday morning. I tried
and tried to remember if I had eaten a bagel before the Bunny Run a few weeks
before but couldn’t remember. So I just
didn’t get anything to nosh on pre-race.
I figured, it’s just a 5K, I’ll be done in less than half an hour, I don’t
need fuel. About 8 minutes before the
race was scheduled to start, I started feeling very hungry. Great.
I’m not eating an entire bagel that close to the start of a race, even “just
a 5K.” I haven’t ever thrown up while
running and I’d like to keep it that way, thanks. So I ran hungry.
I went into this race hoping to get a new PR. I really wanted to get an official time of
27:30 or faster. I was also hoping to
place in my age group this year. As I waited
at the start line for the race to start feeling worn down and tired and hungry,
I wasn’t sure these would be possible. But
dang it, I was going to try! I had set
up my music and paused it with my RedFox headphones so all I had to do when the
race started was hit the pause button again and it would start playing.
I set up my Polar to estimate my finish time for a 5K. As the race started and I crossed over the
timing mat, I hit start on my Garmin and on my Polar. Then I hit the pause button on my RedFox and
nothing happened. So I hit the skip
button and still nothing. Great. As I’m running, I pull my phone out and
discover that the music player was completely unselected. So I started it back up and then focused on
doing what I could to make a PR happen.
For the first about ¾ of a mile, my Polar was estimating a
25-ish minute finish. Awesome! As I got to the 1 mile mark, it was leveling
out just shy of 27 minutes. I was
cruising along at 8:28 min/mi for the first 2 miles (yep, exact same mile time
for the first 2 miles…win!). My third
mile was a bit slower at 8:53. The lack
of sleep and the hunger were started to wear me down. When my Garmin buzzed on my wrist that I had
just hit 3 miles and there was about .1 of a mile to go, I hit the gas. The last .17 of the race was at an 8:20
pace. Boom! I brought it home and finished in 27:14! I made goal #1 of a new PR happen! I was so excited! I was also tired, but I don’t believe I was
completely spent. I think I could have
prepared a little better and pushed myself a little harder and done
better. A 5K of 26:something will happen
before 2015 is over, I guarantee it.
Now to wait for the majority of the runners/walkers to
finish so they can have the awards ceremony.
I went into the tent to give my name to the officials for the law
enforcement runner list and then scoped out the medals table. Hmm…there was suspiciously very few medals on
the table. So I looked a little
closer. The children’s age groups were
normal. 10 and under, and 11-19. After that it got weird. 20-35, 36-50, 50+. What the heck is this? 15 year age groups? I’ve never heard of this before. My friend Ben also ran and was in second
overall place (he got beat by a teenager…hehehehe). He and I have run a few of the same races but
have yet to get a picture together. Fail. Anyway, we knew he was getting a medal and he
asked me “you got a medal coming to you?”
I said “I hope so!” Before too
long, the awards ceremony was under way.
They got to my age group and gender and guess who got 3rd
place? Yep, little ol’ me! YAY! With
those weird age groups, I’ll happily take a 3rd place award. I do really wish the medal had the awesome
new logo on it instead of some generic cross country running scene, but it is
inscribed for this race on the reverse side, so that’s okay. Maybe they’ll have customized medals and even
bibs next year! I can hope, right?
There was an official photographer/videographer, but I’m not
sure if or when the photos he took will be posted. Thankfully, there were a few people from my
agency out there taking pictures that weren’t running, so I’ve been able to
snag their pictures to use here.
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| with Paula & Karen post-race |
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| my bib and 3rd place finisher's medal |
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| i'm in the center to the left of the little girl in the white shirt and black shorts...kinda hard to see |
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| this was around mile 2 |
I love this race and look forward to running it every
year! They raised $2650 in donations for
the ADL and I believe that donation total was matched by one of the sponsoring
businesses. That is so awesome! This is honestly one of my favorite races to
run.
Congrats!
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