Brace yourselves, people.

The following announcement may set some of your worlds off-kilter, spinning crazily out of control.

I ran a 5K.  That’s right. 3.2 miles.

In all previous known history, my response to any suggestion of running as exercise would be, in the immortal words of Steve Sanders: “When monkeys fly out my butt”. But for some reason known only to god, I got it in my head to give the C2 5K thing a try, as first mentioned here.  It takes 9 weeks to complete it, and I have not done that yet. I still gave in to the Stitchers’ plea and signed up for the Valentines’ Love ’em or Leave ’em race that took place this past Saturday at Green Lake.

Given that I was only in week 5 of C2 5K and I hadn’t run longer than 5 minutes at a time, I was a little leery of attempting a 5K.  3.2 miles is a long way! I had no idea if I could do it. We lined up at the 11 minute/mile pace banner which put us just about in the middle of the crowd of 3,000.

After the gun went off, we really didn’t move for a few minutes, waiting for the fast people to get going.  Then we started shuffling a bit and gaining momentum.  There seemed to be a wide variety of folks – a guy with a dog and a double stroller, an old guy running barefoot, and lots of people who walked the course. We were swept up in the crowd, everybody finding their pace. Luckily the group we were with seemed to be pretty right on in terms of speed – we were passed but we passed a few, too.

Now, my 5 minutes of straight running before this race would get me about half a mile before the program would say “walk”, and believe me, I was usually ready for it by that point. So I was surprised when I didn’t really feel the need to stop and catch my breath or rest my legs. I went TWO MILES before I stopped for a minute or two! Seriously!  Started up again and maybe went another half mile and stopped, at which point Danielle said I looked like I was going to throw up, but I felt fine – just needed to catch my breath for a minute or two. By that time, the finish was in sight and was a great motivator.

It was quite a scene at the staging area – booths giving away swag, music blaring, some guy announcing stuff that we couldn’t hear. Lots of pink tutus, red and pink socks and beads. Thank god for Danielle and Carolyn or I would have been lost.

Official time: 33:30, or 154th out of 330 in my division. The female first place finisher did it in 17 minutes. Wow.

Sam and Lauren (who have actually done marathons) asked if I’d keep at it.  I have to say I am a little amazed that I did it, and aside from sore legs 2 days later, I feel pretty good.  I don’t see any marathons in my future, but I am considering the St. Paddy’s Day Dash…

And let me be clear, if I can do this, anyone can.