Race Against Hunger

We started our Thanksgiving pretty early. We had to be downtown by 7:00 to check in for the 5K Race Against Hunger. This was the 5th annual race held by Visalia Emergency Aid Council. The turnout was supposed to surpass last year, and I believe it did.

It was a cold morning, so it was tough to be there an hour before the race was set to start. We had to be there early because my company broke the record for the most participants in the 5K run and 2 mile walk and VEAC wanted a photo of all of our participants. So, I guess we were there for a good reason, but it was very cold.

As the race was about to start, Meg and I began to do some stretches and warm up. She seemed to be doing pretty good in the cold weather. We moved into position and ended up starting toward the back of the pack. As the horn sounded, we began to weave our way slowly through the crowd to get to some open space so that we could run at our pace. Looking back now, that strategy could have been wrong for Meg. Maybe we should have started at the front of the pack.

Meg was struggling from the beginning of the race. She had to go to the bathroom and was also having problems running on the street. I kept trying to take her mind off of all that by talking to her, but it was not helping. About 1/2 mile into the race she finally started to feel OK, but it was still not as good as she felt in our last 3 mile training run. We hit the 1 mile mark and she was still doing OK, but she wanted to slow down a lot.

I continued to encourage her and we were able to keep a pretty good pace. She started to feel a little bit better and for about 1/4 mile we picked up the pace and began to pass a lot of people. She was still doing OK as we hit the 2 mile mark. Then, she hit a wall at about the 2 1/2 mile mark. She was really struggling to continue at our pace. I kept telling her to ignore her problems and breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth. This relaxed her some, but it was still a struggle for her.

As we got close to the 3 mile mark, she tried as hard as she could. We started to pass a few people and she had a really good finish as she saw all of the people lined up at the end of the race. We ended up finishing with an official time of 29:08. Our actual time according to my Garmin Forerunner was closer to 28:53. Either way, it was a great time for Meg's first ever 5K run. I was, and still am very proud of her. I kept telling her she did great.

I didn't see any of my coworkers during the race. They all started in front of us. In the end, there was only one of them that finished in front of us and his time was in the 20 minute range so there was no way we could compete with him. I told this to Meg and again told her that I was really proud of her and that this was a great accomplishment for her.

She already told me that she does not want to run in the race next year. We will see if she changes her mind as time goes on.