Cinco De Mayo 5K

After the Provo half marathon last Saturday I had no intentions whatsoever of doing any more races until the full marathon, but then I got an email about this fun little Cinco De Mayo 5K. The registration was only $15, and it came with a tech shirt and TWO free tickets to the Orem Hale Center Theater. There was no way I was going to pass that up! Just the play tickets are worth $28, more than the registration fee!

Where's waldo? Can you see me in this picture? I can. Hint: far left.
Also, can you see Kyle Perry (far left with white shirt and blue stripes on the shoulders)? He is a national champion that runs for BYU. Needless to say he won the race. He ran it in in 14 minutes something seconds. Sick huh? And that was after he had already done a hard workout earlier in the day! Notice the 3 amigos booking it in the front? They were quite festive for this race. I would hate to wear a mask like that while I was running! Maybe that's why the sprint lead they had in this picture only lasted about .3 miles. I think it's funny how far ahead they are of Kyle in this picture because I think he ended up beating all of them by at least 10 minutes.

I had a lot of fun with this race. The best part was knowing that it would be over before most of my races even start! I told Scott that morning that I was really excited to do a race where I could finish before I "hit the wall."

I went an hour before the race and ran the course because I was supposed to do 7 miles that day for marathon training. It was kind of nice knowing exactly what the course was like before the race even started. Then Scott met me when he got off work and watched Boston while he snapped pictures and waved at me like the awesome supportive husband that he is.

Did you know Scott and I met 4 years ago on Cinco De Mayo day? My friend brought me to a Cinco De Mayo party that Scott was also at. That was our first encounter. Then one thing led to another and know we've been married almost 3 years and have a baby! Pretty crazy how time flies like that.

Coming down the home stretch. The race wasn't as easy as I thought it would be because although I told myself that I was only doing it for the play tickets and I wasn't going to run it very fast, my competitive side kicked in and I still wanted to run it as fast as my body would let me. I didn't "hit the wall" like I do in distance races, but my legs were tightening up the last mile.

I finished in 21:50 and got 1st place in my age group (19-24), and 4th female overall. (That's a plus of doing small random races!) I won four free tacos to Rubio's! Scott was really happy about that because that's one of his all time favorite restaurants. We had them for dinner the next night and the total would have come to $16.60, but we got it for FREE! Yippee! I would say I definitely got my money's worth for this race! It was seriously the best deal 5K ever! I would do it every year if we weren't moving to Texas!

After the race we got chips and salsa, margarita's, fruit, and some kind of Mexican fiesta cake that I forgot what it was called, but it was delicious. Talk about an awesome 5K! Now you know what 5K to sign up for if they do this again next year!

I think I may want to have fun training for some shorter races after my marathon is over. It would be a totally different kind of training, but I think it would be a fun change to focus on 5K's, 10K's and half marathons for awhile. I also want to say that I really love Scott for being so supportive of my running! He's so nice to watch Boston all the time when I go on long runs on Saturdays, and get up early and come to my races, and take pictures, etc. etc. He's awesome. I love him.

P.S. The marathon is THIS Saturday! I have butterflies just writing that. I'm excited and nervous, but mostly excited. I hope it's good weather, and I hope I get the time I want!