The Anoka Jingle Bell Run 5K Race Report!

Hi everyone! I am back from a little blogging break. Thank you to everyone who left me kind comments on my last post. I appreciate it more than you know. Life has been so incredibly busy between work, kid's activities and everything else. I have not been running much because of the lack of time. I also think that I needed a little break to recharge and refresh. This morning I drove into Anoka to run in the Jingle Bell 5K. I ran this race last year and was able to pull a 2nd place age group win:) I knew that today would be challenging because of my lack of training and the colder temperatures.

This picture was taken in the field house where my bib and t-shirt pickup was. I was bib number 277!! Lucky girl, my favorite number is seven:) I attempted to take more pictures but my camera's battery died....nice ! Once I got home, I put a new battery in. I noticed that my almost five year old got a hold of my camera. There were several pictures of our computer.....he was watching Spiderman on Netflix:) There was also about 20 pictures of himself....no wonder the battery died!

The race started at 10 AM and it was about 15 degrees. I knew that I would warm up once I actually started running. There were a little over 300 runners and I positioned myself in the middle of the pack. Once we were off it took a few minutes to get positioned where I wanted to be. The course is a pretty one that runs along a river. We ran on dirt-snow packed and paved trails. There was snow on the ground and a few areas with icy patches. I felt alright running with a first mile time of 7:16. I was a little surprised because I felt like I was moving much slower than that. There were several rolling hills that I remembered well from last year:) Mile two was a little slower than the first because I was feeling kind of crappy. This is what I get for not running much over the past three weeks! Yuck, I felt a little like puking..and slowed down more. The good news is that only four people past me...all men:) The last half mile was the hardest and I felt like I was moving at snails pace. I saw the clock and it said 24:50 something. I stopped my Garmin and it read 24:40. I went online to check my stats and there were none for me! WTH! I am not sure what happened but it looks like I never ran! Bummer! The race was not chip timed and the volunteers had us tear off the bottom part of our bibs. I looked at the stats and noticed that according to the clock and my Garmin I took 2nd place for my age group:) It is a good thing that they did not give out medals or I would of been disappointed. Oh well, there are bigger tragedies in life.

Tomorrow I am running two virtual races. I am running P's birthday virtual run and Sefano's Black Knight Army 10K! Hopefully I will have those race reports posted soon:)

Happy running, biking, swimming, lifting and surfing! Cheers to you all!

Tomorrow I will catch up on reading blogs and commenting:)