The first after the half marathon last year was the Harvest Hands 5K in October. Initially it was a race I did not want to participate in being so soon after such a long race. My mom convinced me to run it if she paid for it, and the first 100 people to register also got a free pair of Swiftwick socks. SOLD! Sign me up!
The morning of the race, I drove to the site and got everything prepared. I pinned my bib on, laced my car key onto my shoe laced (and prayed hard it did not fall out), and made sure my Garmin was fully charged! When the gun went off, I stepped over the timing chip and away the group went, out of the parking lot of Greer Stadium, and turned left towards Ft Negley Park. And that is when I saw it....a hill. A HUGE hill. Oh no!! And at the beginning....oh well, here goes nothing.
I managed to get over the hill, and the rest of the race was a pretty uneventful race. We ran down (and then up) a smaller hill, through a couple of neighborhoods, and then finished on the Nashville Sounds baseball field. My official finishing time was 33:26 which is TWO SECONDS slower than my personal record! How frustrating it was to finish two seconds later!!
The event organizers had a station at the end where you type in your bib number, and a receipt is printed out with your time, pace, race rank, gender rank, and age group rank. But at the top of my receipt were the words "Awards F 5k 35-39: 2nd Place" What what WHAT??
The award ceremony was pretty short, since this was the first year the race was conducted, and there were not many people who participated. And the reason I actually placed. But in the end I scored a pretty hefty coffee mug, a metal and a homemade bar of soap. It was some sweet stuff for a race I initially did not want to run.
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