\n<\/strong>Since I hadn’t gotten any running done, I decided to ride my bike\u00a0instead. I figured it’d be a great cardio workout (and it was) to get me pumped up for the 5km and at the same time, stretch out my uber-rested legs. The 17-mile ride went OK; it’s the winter in Las Vegas after all. My toesies were numb, it was windy as heck, but I got 7 PR’s on Strava. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Race Morning<\/strong> After getting my bib, I\u00a0went straight back to the car\u00a0for warmth. The morning was beyond nippy, but the air was crisp and there were only scattered clouds in sight — perfect race conditions! After donning my bib and shedding off my puffy jacket, I went to the porta-potties (TMI) and then began my warm up of a slow jog for 10 minutes, and then dynamic stretching for another 5. After my warm up, I found Rob (the mastermind of getting us registered!), Monica, and Rob’s wife, Vicki.<\/p>\n It’s a Race!<\/strong> Around mile 2.9 or so, the lady in front of me began to slow down and\u00a0began to walk on the final uphill! I’d already been pushing it, my lungs were slightly burning from all the exertion, and a part of me knew this was my chance to finally pass her, but my nicer part kicked in! I ended up encouraging her to keep going. I looked back and saw another lady catching up to us and told this one to the effect of “come on, there’s another woman behind us. We can do this!”<\/p>\n I ended up finishing 3rd, about 2.4 seconds behind this lady I encouraged to keep moving. There was no PR for me (chip time: 0:26:59) which was surprising considering the effort, but I was elated with my finish anyway.<\/p>\n Awards <\/p>\n p.s., I’m not sure what the first and second place got, but I scored a $25 gift certificate\u00a0towards compression sleeves and 15% off a pair of Altras!<\/p>\n Gear<\/strong><\/p>\n Moving Comfort Luna<\/p>\n Nike Poly\/Wool blend top Injinji trail midweight socks<\/p>\n Altra Superior 2.0\u00a0“Tony the Tiger” (mileage: 33.6mi)<\/p>\n Nuun trucker cap Forerunner 910xt No PR but I did place 3rd overall female finisher. lol, thank goodness for smaller races to give me that confidence boost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[247,224],"tags":[535,507,256,547,464],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5755"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5755"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5767,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5755\/revisions\/5767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIt took me 30 minutes from my wake time of 4:45 am to finally have breakfast. Then another 20 minutes to get ready and I’m not quite sure where the rest of the time went because I went out the door at 5:58 am,\u00a0way past my “leave the house by 5:45 am or you’ll be late” plan. lol. Still, I arrived at Lake Mead in good time and\u00a0saw that there weren’t that many that registered for this event — which was a shame because they had 4 distances, the race fee was not too enormous, and the shwag was pretty cool!<\/p>\n
\nThe 5km field was small —\u00a0I’d say just a little bit over 100 runners. I\u00a0wasn’t close to the starting arch, but my friends and I were close enough to see the mat. I\u00a0didn’t really have a strategy\u00a0but kind of told myself (and Monica) that I wanted to PR and I *will* PR. When the starting horn went off, I eased into the run (it was uphill) for a few seconds but told myself “what are you doing?!” charged up the hill where I passed a few people and caught sight of the leaders. Being my semi-competitive self, I counted the number of women ahead of me — 4\u00a0at that time. By the first downhill, I’d passed 2 women only to be passed by this lady after less than a quarter of a mile into the race. That was the position for nearly all 3 miles; there was this faster lady\u00a0way in front of us (whom I cheered for after the turn around), and this other lady and I; me practically nipping at her heels. I have to add after the turnaround, I saw two fellow Nuunbassadors (I assumed cos they were decked out in Nuun gear!) and cheered them on.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Monica, Rob, and Vicki, all did well (Monica placed 1st in her age group!) I’d never overall podiumed before and this was Monica’s first podium ever, so I was over the moon when the presenter called my name to approach the stage.\u00a0I got to shake hands with the\u00a02nd place lady (who thanked me for encouraging her and briefly said she’d been out of shape!) and hammed it up a bit: I wore my galaxy pants after all. \ud83d\ude42 Overall, it was a great race experience and one that definitely kicked off my 2016 season.<\/p>\n![\"PodiumHam\"](\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-content\/2016\/01\/PodiumHam.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nNike Dri-Fit shirt
\n2XU Compression tights
\nGalaxy print pants<\/p>\n
\nOakley Straight Line 2.0 (prescription glasses)
\nUltrAspire Quantum waist belt<\/p>\n
\nPolar Loop
\nRoad ID<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"