It’s been a long time since I’ve actually wanted to post pictures of people on my blog.  I usually try to not even mention names as to keep things somewhat private.  I kinda want to post our post-race picture because I like it a lot.  :)  But too bad…lol.

F, C, and I ran in the Chargers/Kaiser Bolt to the Q 5K on Saturday.  It was pretty fun.  TYP kindly dropped us off super duper early at 6:15am at the start.  The race would start at Murphy Canyon Rd near Aero drive and end at the 50 yard line in the stadium.  We had signed up for this race awhile ago because I wanted to do an “official” 5K to see how fast I could run a 5K.  The last official one I did was back in 2006 at the La Jolla 5K/Half Marathon which I ran it in 31:56/10:16 pace.  We picked this one because it sounded the coolest – getting to run into the stadium and onto the field.  Though the actual reality of it was that it wasn’t THAT cool..lol…because you couldn’t stand on the grass or play around lol.  Anyway…

The course for this race was primarily downhill which is good 5K for new runners.  It also makes it a fast one.  Downhill however is not good for all the injuries we came into the race with.  F’s calf was injured, C’s calf was injured, and my knee has been pretty jacked.  All these injuries but F & I still PR’d which was great.  Our goal was to run it under 30 minutes – which was also my goal back in October.  There were supposedly 3000 runners and the first 2500 would get Chargers headbands.  We joked that we better make it in and not get beat by people.

The start of the race wasn’t so good.  My knee was hurting right from the get go so I was lagging behind.  I think everyone was hurting a bit too lol.  The first mile was about right at 10 minutes.  If we were going to make it under 30 minutes we’d have to pick up the pace.  There was some slight incline in mile 1 – totally didn’t anticipate that – it was mildly difficult for a short period of time but doable.  Mile 2 was downhill – making it super fast and somewhat painful – though my knee actually didn’t hurt that much once it has warmed up a bit.  I believe mile 2 ended up roughly at a 8:35 pace.  Mile 3 was in some trail area that ended up being very narrow (for the amount of people that were running).  You could run about 3 people wide.  It was hard to pass people.  Mile 3 ended up around 9:20 pace.  These were all unofficial splits from my watch.  Official time?