Oh man. Remember that time I had a blog? I’ve been in total lala land the past few weeks as I moved, got married, turned 30, and oh yeah… officially got accepted into the 2018 Boston Marathon!! I also ran my first mile race and set a crazy (to me) flashy new PR of 6:06. Recap of that to come soon. But first, let’s go back to yesterday’s 5K!

Back in July I ran my first trail race and and inadvertently won an Instagram contest the organizers were running, which got me a free entry to one of their other races this fall. I followed my running bestie Alexa’s advice and signed up for their Oktoberfest 5k race. The timing wasn’t ideal, as this Saturday was Yom Kippur (a Jewish holiday that involves a 25 hour fast), but I figured I would run it for fun. Like the Cambridge Half Marathon, the bib pickup and post-race party for this race are in the parking garage of the Cambridgeside Galleria, which is a local shopping mall. The logistics were super smooth, and within 15 minutes or so I was running a couple of gentle miles to warm up. I felt fairly good and the weather was perfect–in the mid 50s and sunny. Alexa and I decided we would start together and see how we felt, and after surveying the crowd we had a good feeling we could stick near the front.

We started out mile 1 pretty fast, clocking a 6:32, but both were feeling comfortable and were able to chat and laugh a little bit. Mile 2 the sun was feeling much warmer than it had at the start and we let the pace slip, clocking a 6:51. The crowd was fairly thin and I hadn’t seen many women ahead of us, so I picked it back up and aimed to pick off a few people leading into the finish. I could definitely tell that I had slightly under-hydrated and probably overeaten a little bit, so I was pretty much pushing at my max without much left for a final kick. We turned the corner towards the finishing chute, which was fairly long, and I watched a couple of ladies fly by as I gutted it out over the finish line. My final time by the numbers looked like:

• Official finishing time of 20:34
• 116th overall (out of 2,346)
• 12th female finisher (out of 1,200)
• What would have been 3rd in my AG (no AG awards for this race, of course)

Since this is my first race of my 30s, I was a little bummed the results aren’t officially broken out by age, but I’m super proud of my finish. This was a strong PR over my last 5k, when I ran 20:59. After the race Alexa and I grabbed a couple of drinks and toasted to her wedding (1 week to go!!) with her hubby-to-be. We scooted out to get on with our days before the party really got rolling, but I bet things got pretty wild since every runner gets up to 5 free drinks! Overall, this was a really fun morning and it definitely leaves me with a little bit of curiosity about how close I would be to breaking that 20 minute barrier if I really put my mind to it. Next week, it’s onwards and upwards to the Tufts Health Plan 10k for Women, and hopefully a strong 10k PR. Bostonians, registration is still open and you don’t want to miss this race–it’s truly one of my all-time favorites!