5 km Santa Shuffle

I am back home from my trip to Halifax. Joey and I went up on Friday evening as we were doing the Santa Shuffle 5 km run on Saturday morning.

My goal for the run was to run it in under 36 minutes. If you remember, the last run I did was on Thanksgiving weekend and I ran the 5 k in 38:51. I wasn't sure how I was going to do since I had only run once since the last run and my knees have been bothering me too. I like having goals that make me push myself and I was really hoping that 36 minutes was going to be doable.
When I run, I stomp so I had been working on walking heel to toe on the treadmill and I also take short steps so I was also working on lengthing my stride on one of the eliptical machines at the gym.

It was a cold drizzly morning and it was hard to get warmed-up, but I did the best I could. The run began at 10am. It was a gun start with no chip timing so you had to watch for your time when you crossed the finish line. The run was in Shearwater and started in the parking lot and then went down some residential streets. I made it through the parking lot at a really good pace and then hit the residential streets and looked up to see a long hill. I thought that this must be the only one so it is good to get it over with...but I was wrong! I made it to the top of the hill (it kicked my ass, by the way) and then enjoyed the nice down hill section and finished the first km in about 7 mins and 30 secs. I was kind of disappointed with that but I kept going and I knew that I was going to have to work hard to make up some time. We turned up and down some streets and then came around a corner to a REALLY STEEP HILL! I thought, "what are they trying to do to me?" I made it about half-way up the hill and I had to walk. I really didn't want to walk, but at this point I was just thinking "Make it to the top of the hill anyway you can". At the top of the hill I realized that I had not been controlling my breathing and I think that is why I had such difficulties. So from then on I thought "Control your breathing, don't let it control you" and I kept repeating that to myself.

We made it to the halfway mark and realized that we had to so the exact same course over which meant I had to tackle the same two hills AGAIN! I thought, for just one split second, about giving up. But I knew I would be really disappointed in myself if I gave up, so I kept going. I knew that I had to dig deep and really focus on my breathing, my strides, and running heel to toe. I kept telling myself "Control your breathing, don't let it control you. I am strong, I can do this." I did walk the hills and was overjoyed when we made it back to the parking lot and could see the finish line. I crossed the finish line. My time was 34:45.

Over all, I was really happy with my time. It would have been nice to run the whole course, but I am still happy with how I did. When I got back to the truck I was talking to Joey and he said that I should do a 10k next. I said no because my ultimate goal for 5k is to run it in under 30 minutes. So I will do the next one in under 32 minutes and from there I will work on doing it in under 30 minutes then maybe I will consider a 10k.