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Munford Celebrate 5k

Saturday was the Munford Celebrate 5k. This was my third year to run this race and each year has been fun. 

The course has several small hills throughout-which I love. My only problem is that my usual training course is completely flat. However, I do enough hill training that these hills really aren't that bad. It is usually pretty hot on race day (again something I love) but this year was not too bad. The people that put it on are really awesome. And to make things even better there is a Kid's Fun Run after the 5k.

This year I ran into a small dilemma. After a horrible long run on Sunday, my 1year old was sick on Tuesday and Wednesday. I had some pretty hard workouts planned for those days. I made the mistake of doing them both on Thursday....two days before the race. That meant sore hamstrings and shoulders for a couple days. I was over all of that by Saturday morning and actually felt pretty good after I stretched. I got a chance to see a few people I hadn't seen in awhile, which was nice.

I thought going in that I had a pretty good shot at a really good finish time because of the weather. During the race I felt pretty good. No lingering side effects of my overtraining from a couple days earlier. Towards the end of the race I still felt good but I knew my time wasn't gonna be great. I knew with those little hills I needed to conserve just a little to finish strong.

The last tenth of a mile is where I am usually at my best. I practice during at least one run every week finishing strong. When I saw my time as I approached the finish line I was a little dissapointed. However, I pushed through the finish.

My time was 22:04. That is actually 10 seconds better than the previous two times I ran this race. The one bummer is that after all of the complaining about finishing 2nd in my age group twice in that race, I finished 3rd.

I did get a couple nice complements that gave my confidence a much needed boost. The guy that finished ahead of me said he knew I was somewhere behind him and had to make sure he didn't slow down. The guy that finished behind me told me "great finish, I tried to close on you but I couldn't." I said thanks but on the inside I was thinking "you can't close on me, I finish STRONG!"

After the 5k was when the real fun began. Nate and Sophie ran the Kid's Fun Run which was a half mile. I ran the race with Nate last year and he really enjoyed it. This year I signed Sophie up and let her do it. I decided to run with Sophie since this was her first race. It was really special. We finished last but this beautiful little girl tried hard and even had a STRONG finish just like Daddy!

Overall it was a great day at the races. I didn't do as well as I had hoped but I did pretty well. I also got to run with my daughter in her first race. We forgot to bring the camera so here are some pictures from the race photographer:

This is my reaction to seeing the clock and realizing I am nowhere near the time I wanted.
This is me finishing strong.
This is my reaction to how I did.
This is me accepting my 3rd place age group medal.
Here is a shot of my three girls.

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