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So Saturday morning was the Pi Mile Run. I rarely ever get to run 5ks anymore since Saturdays are for long runs and most 5ks are on Saturdays. But I have been unable to do this run the last two years because of injuries, so I signed up this year. Mainly because I just wanted the t-shirt...

Before the recap, a short story. Friday night I went to a movie with some friends. After the movie, I hopped on my bike to ride home. About a mile from home, I am tooling along (on the sidewalk - I know, I know, but I refuse to ride on this particular street, especially at night). Then, all of a sudden, without turning on a blinker or anything, this car turns right in front of me. I slammed on my breaks, probably a little too hard, and I went flying. So I am on the ground, bruised up, but okay. The driver of the car was like an 18 year old kid and he was totally freaked out about what happened, so at least I didn't have someone blaming me while I was on the ground. My laptop was on my back (not in it's little padded sleeve!) but thank goodness I went flying forward. Afterwards, I decided to walk my bike a little because I was pretty shook up. I was walking along and to top the evening off, some guy yells out the window "Why don't you get a car!?!" Sigh. Ames sucks sometimes. Really, do people have nothing better to do than taunt bike riders?

Okay back to the run. So the morning after the incident, I go down to the park for the 5k. This race was sooooo small. That's what happens when there are 3 5ks in a town of 50,000 people (including students) on the same morning. Chrissy happened to be there too, making her racing debut after her bike incident. Oh yeah, she is totally out for the Twin Cities Marathon. The driver's insurance company is reimbursing her registration fee... Yeah, I am sure that $70 will cover all the hours of training she put in for what was supposed to be her first marathon...

Chrissy hadn't run more than 2 miles since she got hit. We went and warmed up together a bit. Every step I could feel the big matching bruises I had on my legs from the night before. It sucked.

The course was one that is used quite often in 5ks in Ames. In fact, the last 5k I ran was on almost the same exact course. The race in April I finished in 30:10, but I was hungover on tequila and I stopped to eat four Krispy Kremes. With the donut time deductions, I actually ended up with a 27:40, but I don't consider that an official PR :-) Anyways, after having a good race weekend last weekend, I really wanted to PR on this. My fastest 5k was in February, 28:17.

So the 20 or so of us line up (I told you it was small!) and we were off! I have never felt more ridiculous than I did during this race. There was a pack of people who took off ahead of me and people behind me, but there was no one running around my pace. I barely saw anyone after the first half mile. I felt minorly ridiculous running through the park with a race number on. I wanted to to tell every non-racer I passed "I'm not last! Really! There are others behind me!"

They didn't have mile markers which bummed me out. My Garmin said I did the first mile in 8 minutes, and I didn't buy that. Plus there are lots of trees in the park - I wouldn't count on it to be accurate. So I really had no clue how fast I was going. So I pushed it the entire way. And then, before I knew it, I was done! 27:49, baby! Almost 30 seconds off my last PR. I was psyched. And the pace was 8:58 min/mi. There was an 8 as the first digit! That never happens! I don't care if that is only 2 seconds off 9. It's still an 8.

And then! To top it off, they had weird age groups (19-25, 26-35, etc). I was the only person at all in the 26-35 age group, so I won prizes! I can't wait to get that Love It Creation at Coldstone Creamery, yum yum yum! It was such a gorgeous perfect day for a race. In fact, I was excited about going and running the 7 extra miles I needed to run, it was that nice out.

And Chrissy? 20 minutes. She came in first. The boys couldn't even catch her. She won a pie. And still had enough left to kick my ass yesterday in the spinning class she teaches.