Susan G. Komen

As you may remember from last year the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K is my competitive race I do every year. I suppose I have a healthy amount of competitiveness during every race I run (well maybe not The Color Run) but this is my race where I set goals and really do my best to achieve them

The goal this year was same as last… 5K in under 30 minutes. Even after running for over a year a 10 minutes mile is still a challenge for me. My distance has improved which in the grand scheme of things is my goal but my speed has maintained relatively steady over the course of the year. A solid 11:30 is comfortable and a 10:50-11:15ish is my norm for a challenge that doesn’t kill me. So when I say a 5K in less than a half hour I mean serious business.

Similar to last year we recruited some awesome gals to run the race with us! We had some that returned from last year (Kara and Brittany) and we had some newbies that joined us as well… Ashley, Christy, My mom Carole, Jeff and Peggy. It was a bunch of men and women getting together for such an awesome charity to raise money to help fight breast cancer.

When I started the race I was feeling pretty good. I managed a pretty steady 9min mile for the first mile and made it to the Sheetz gas station in downtown Akron in an impressive amount of time (or so Tim said because I was texting him to let him know where I was). Just when I started to slow down from the monster of a hill in Akron I was reenergized by a group of men and women on their motorcycles revving their engines and yelling good lucks and way to go’s at all of the runners. By the third hill my calves were ON FIRE but as I finally caught up to Christy gave her butt a good pick it up smack I was ready to keep going.

At the very end I managed to complete the race in a full out sprint in 29 minutes 36 seconds with Jeff by my side- who kicked some serious butt!

I rocked my Sweat Pink shoe laces and my mom rocked the Sweat Pink tank during our run! Turns out the fact that we wore all black made it VERY hot but made us VERY easy to see on the news that evening! Between this and my brief stint on the news during the flashmob I participated in I may be on to something =)

There just couldn’t be a better race than Komen’s. The event is so full of love and laughter and HOPE. When you start to get tired and slow down it takes only a second to think about a loved one you know that has battled breast cancer or look around and see the pictures of loved ones on other’s backs to know that you are strong and that you can push yourself. This is my FAVORITE race and I hope to continue to do it every year.

Then as an added treat (painted faces and all) we went to Wally Waffle to celebrate the success with mom and dad (Dad and Tim were waiting for us cheering us on at the finish line) and devoured a buckeye (peanut butter and chocolate) banana and an omelet! Delicious!