When the year started, I set out some goals for myself. I am admittedly doing better in some than in others, but one that I am really setting my eyes towards is being able to run in a 5K race. A bit of searching on the intertubes revealed that there are quite a few of them in the Merrimack Valley alone (the area of New England I live in), but if I broaden that search to the whole of Massachusetts and New Hampshire there are even more to choose from.
I did some searching yesterday and tracked down one race in Wakefield, MA on Lake Quannapowitt that I think could be a good one for someone who's never run in a 5K (about 3.1 miles) before. It's a flat course around a big lake that lots of people run; in fact, a couple of the people I work with run/walk it on a regular basis. The link to the race page did not work, so I emailed the contact to make sure that the race is still "on" and to verify the date. I heard back from him and it's on November 6, 2010.
Quannapowitt Reflections Originally uploaded by excard1970
I've decided that this will be the race that I run this year. A while back, Fit This Girl had offered a piece of advice that it makes it easier to train for a race when you've actually signed up for one. Since the sign-ups aren't available yet, the best I can do is mark it in our calendar so that I have the goal in mind.
Now that I have one, I have to work on my time. From what I've been able to tell from some online research, it seems like the average time to be able to run a 5K is between 30-40 minutes. In the fall before we went to Jamaica, I did my first go on a treadmill (our gym has a treadmill with a 5K loop setting) and my initial time was 44 minutes, 54 seconds. Last night I did it again and found out that I have shaved 3 minutes off of my time; I was able to complete it in 41 minutes, 54 seconds last night. This means I'm not far off from the average run time, which makes me excited.
For now, I'm still not able to run the entire 5K on the treadmill which means there's no way I'd be able to run the entire thing outside yet (treadmill offers less resistance than actual road surface). I'm getting closer and closer the more I work for it though, which is encouraging for someone who was never really a runner. As soon as the weather is consistently nice, I'm going to start running outside and maybe even try to get over to Quannapowitt once in a while after work just to try the course out.
I'm excited about having a path towards reaching one of my goals before the year is out.
4 comments:
Mad proud of you, Danielle. A friend of mine lives near that lake and says it's a really nice run. Let me know if you have any questions about running in general, although you've probably found a wealth of resources online.
Good luck! I've been thinking of starting to run, my brother and sister are both long distance runners and I'm jealous of how they can go for these long runs without too much effort.
Yay!! Good for you, I have YET to sign up for me two that I have on the horizon, one of which is the 3rd! Thanks for the motivation! Hope BS was awesome for you!! ;)
Awesome. Can't wait to see you succeed!
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