Phillies Charities 5K Recap

On Saturday I ran my first race of 2019 and my first 5K race in almost a year! To be completely honest, I forgot how different it was to do such a shorter distance race, but more about that later! A few months ago, I stumbled across an ad for the Phillies Charities 5K on Facebook. I mentioned the race to John and he actually seemed interested! A little preface about John and running: he has a love/hate relationship with running and races. A few years back, he would run with me a lot. He has completed a good amount of 5Ks, one 10-miler, and one half marathon. He may or may not have ran the half without any real training... So once I realized John actually might want to run a race with me, I jumped on it! After some research, we realized the perks {a cool race shirt, tickets to a Phillies game, a medal, and more!} that came with running this 5K were great and John was convinced!

Snappin’ some selfies in the car while we wait!

Okay, now that I've rambled on enough, let's get to race day! The race did not start until 9 am and it was less than a 20 minute drive for us, so John and I were pretty pumped to have a later wake up call. We woke up about 45 minutes before we had to leave. I pretty much just woke up, got dressed, and sat around. I normally don't eat anything before a run that's shorter than 6 or so miles, but because it would be awhile before I started running, I ate a few fig newtons as my breakfast. We arrived at Citizen's Bank Park {home of the Phillies baseball team and the location of the start/finish} around 8 am. Knowing it was super windy out, we sat in the car for awhile to soak up the heat. Finally, around 8:20, we sucked it up and got out so I could use the bathroom. Man, oh man, was the starting area CROWDED! John overheard someone mention the race was sold out and I 100% believe that. There were a ton of port-o-potties to use so I was thankful!

So many people! We hid from the wind in between all these crowds!

After waiting around, and squeezing through the crowds to block the wind, for what felt like hours, it was finally time to start. John and I had discussed our plans for the race that morning and both of us had agreed to stay together in the beginning, but if one of us wanted to get ahead, we could. I had woken up super congested, so I planned to just take it easy and assumed we'd probably stay together. Once the gun went off, we had to weave through the crowd to find some open areas. From what I observed, this seemed like a race that many people came to walk. That wasn't a problem because it only took a few minutes to break away from that crowd of people.

John and I stuck together until about a mile in. He wanted to slow down a bit but somehow I was feeling speedy, so he told me to go ahead. I'm still not sure what got into me, but I was keeping a pace between 8:30-9:00 and I was feeling great. Maybe I was trying to finish as fast as possible to get out of the wind and cold? Probably. To be completely honest, I don't remember much of the race. I know that a few parts of the route were an incline and that was when I really pushed my pace. I skipped the water station around mile 1.5 because I wasn't really thirsty, I didn't want to slow down, and mainly, my hands were so frozen from the wind that I couldn't either fathom the idea of cold water spilling on them. I wasn't really looking at my watch so I didn't even realize I was almost to the finish until I saw the 3 mile marker. All I kept thinking was "wow, I feel like I just started!" 

When I crossed the finish, I took note that my time was less that 29 minutes on the clock. That made me feel great because going into the race, I just wanted to run a good race. I never thought I'd be able to run sub-30 minutes on such a windy day while I was feeling sick. I walked a little past the finish and then stood off to the side to wait for John. John was only a few minutes behind me! He told me that he only had to walk a few times which I find successful considering he has only ran once in the past few months. He finished with an official time of 31:09 and my official finish time was 28:32.

We continued through the chute to get our medals. After looking at it later, I realized the medal has a magnet on the back. So cool! There were water bottles, bananas, and prepackaged soft pretzels for post-race fuel. I'm always happy when there are soft pretzels at the end of a race! We kept walking with the crowd which lead us into the stadium From there we did a cool down lap on the stadiums warning track. It was super cool being able to walk right on the field! We were able to see both dugouts and get an up close view of what those look like. Of course John and I stopped and took some pictures!

Once we exited the stadium, John and I went to the car to grab the ticket vouchers so we could go redeem them at the ticket windows. Each runner received a ticket voucher that gave you redeemed for 4 tickets to a baseball game on one of the selected dates given to us. Between the 2 of us, we got 8 tickets for a game this Sunday! The only downside was that we had to wait in a long line at the ticket windows while the wind blew and chilled us to the bone! I wasn't sure I'd ever thaw out after that!

We both agreed that we were hungry and exhausted after that. I found it funny that I felt so tired after a 5K when I've ran much longer distances and felt better. It must've been the wind and the fact that I was sick! Since we were in Philly, we stopped for Geno's cheese steaks! Instead of sitting outside in the wind or eating in our car, we made the decision to bring them home to eat in our warm house. After that, we took a much needed nap :)

Overall, the Phillies Charities 5K was a great race! It was very well organized and I was happy that my watch and the route lined up pretty much exactly mile-wise. The goodies were received and the experience we had made the price worth it!