Mother’s Day, 5k & Outpacing Myself #Running #Fitness

The whole fam on Mother's Day at the Starting Line

Yesterday I ran an awesome event – the Mothers Day 5k here in my hometown of West Chester, PA. The proceeds from the race go to Mommy’s Light, which is a fabulous local organization that helps the children of Mothers who have passed away from cancer. They work to keep traditions alive with these kids after their mother’s passing and it’s really a beautiful organization.

So I thought it was wonderful to be able to support that by running this Mother’s Day 5k for women only. It was incredibly empowering to run in a sea of pink t-shirts, many, many Moms. I have to admit I teared up a few times passing kids holding signs that read things like “I love you Mommy!” and “You can do it Mommy!” It was really inspirational!

The run itself was a bit “eh” for me. I woke up feeling awful Sunday morning. Just generally run down and dehydrated. A couple of my neighbors were doing the walk instead of the run and I’ll say this – I was definitely tempted. But once we got to the race start, I had too much pride to walk since I run pretty regularly lately. I decided I would run and take it easy and not worry about my pace.

So the guy shouted “go” and I started running. I definitely need to run more races because I have a HUGE issue with the start line. I’ve had several seasoned runners tell me I need to learn about the “bubble.” The bubble is the little space and place you put yourself where you run and not worry about any one else.

I am definitely not there. I felt like everyone was passing me and felt stressed in the beginning. When my Nike+ GPS chimed in at 1 mile to tell me I was at an 8:30 pace, I knew I was hosed. Then I hit the halfway mark at 13:20 which is just WAY too fast for me. As predicted, I peetered out during the second half and had to walk a bit. I blame the heat, the hills and overpacing myself. But it definitely gave me food for thought as I’d like to start running some longer races (including Broad Street – 10 miles – next year) so I need to learn to pace myself and not worry about anyone else around me moving forward.

Overall, as usual I was glad I did it and I love the idea of running a 5k as a tradition with my Mom friends so anyone who is up for it next year needs to do it with me!

Hanging with a friend at the Starting Line. Love the sea of pink in the background!