Gloucester Township 5K Recap

On Saturday I ran my second race of the year, a small 5K in my town called the Gloucester Township 5K. If you remember from my post back in December, I had said I would only run 1 race this spring. Well, since I didn't sign up for any "big" races {half or full marathon} I decided a few small 5Ks would be nice! I heard about this race through my town's newsletter and figured it would cool to run a super local 5K that didn't cost much. I knew John would be away for the weekend so I recruited my little brother to run it with me! It was an interesting race for me so read on if you want to hear about it.

This race morning started unlike many race mornings for me because I didn't have to be up at the crack of dawn {WIN!}. Being less than 5 minutes from the race location meant that we could sleep later and take our time getting there. The start time was 9 am but we still needed to pick up our bibs and shirts so we decided to leave my house around 8:15 to get there with plenty of time to spare. The location of this race was at the senior citizen community center in town that happens to share a parking lot with a park so the parking situation was great. At this point in the morning it was drizzling so we ran into the community center to pick up our stuff. We were amazed at how much thought was put into such a small town 5K. There were handmade signs posted all around the big room everything was in such as the check in and post-race breakfast buffet and they even had a couple of local sponsors handing out freebies. We grabbed our shirts and a few freebies and while heading to my car to stash them away, Dale realized he wasn't sure where his wallet was. Being so close to home, I suggested we drive home real quick to see if it was there. It really worked out because then I was able to use my own bathroom pre-race {there were real flushing bathrooms at the start, as well!} while Dale found his wallet, and we still made it back to the start with time to spare!

The start of the race was a bit odd. The whole race was chip timed but we didn't cross over one of those timing mats in the beginning. It makes me wonder how they figured out the timing then. Anywho, once they let us start, I immediately took off because it was already apparent that there would be a bottleneck ahead where we had to narrow down into a smaller portion of the road. Dale stayed with me at this point. We had agreed beforehand that if I felt like I wanted to push ahead to try and place in my age group, that was fine. I wasn't sure what my plan was because the weather was already so hot and humid, something my body was NOT ready for. I continued to keep pushing and eventually pulled away from Dale after about a half mile because I saw a girl in my age group wasn't too far ahead of me {with this being a smaller race, I was able to easily pick out people in my age group}. I kept pushing but eventually the girl flew past me and I couldn't even try to keep up. 

I didn’t take many pictures but I did manage to  get a picture of Dale crossing the finish line!

My ankle started bugging me around mile 2, which was when another girl in my AG started closing in on me. I had kept turning around to check on Dale and eventually realized how close she really was to me. I had to let myself stop real quick to stretch out my ankle and within that time, the girl passed me. At this point, I assumed I was in 3rd, which felt good. As I neared the end of mile 3, a girl who looked like she was in my AG flew by me without warning. I tried my best to push myself in that last quarter of a mile but the heat was really dragging me down. I crossed the finish line with a time of 28:31 {1 second faster than the Phillies Charities 5K 2 weeks ago!}, just 24 seconds after the 3rd place female in my AG. I was so mad at myself for pushing so hard in the beginning because I believe that was what made my ankle pain flare up later on. I threw myself a quick pity party before letting it go and promising myself to continue working on pace to better myself!

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The post-race breakfast buffet was really nice and I was thankful to have a bagel and some orange slices to fill my stomach. Overall, this was a well put together 5K that I am looking forwarding to running again in the future. It had been awhile since I ran such a small, local 5K and this one made me remember how much I love them! The obvious community pride made me feelgood about the town we chose to move to and call our "home."

Question of the Day: Have you ever done a small town race? If so, what were your thoughts?