my books. my life.

I ran my first 8k on Sunday at the Gasparilla Distance Classic in Tampa. 4.97 miles. And it was fantastic.

I thought the whole thing might be disappointing. My training had not gone as smoothly as planned (I missed a bunch so I was walking a lot and barely able to keep up an 11-12 minute pace). My running buddy had to pull out the day before the race. It was foggy and humid as could be.

(That’s Bayshore. It’s 9am. You should get a nice view of the bay, as the name implies.)

But then I found a friend.

Put on my awesome playlist (turns out, there is no such thing as too much Vampire Weekend on a race day playlist).

And ran.

And ran. And ran.

I usually walk a bit during my runs, but I was feeling good and remembered some advice from my athletic trainer sister-in-law to only walk through water stations. You get a brief rest and you actually get to drink the water (and thank the volunteers). This worked great (until the last two miles where the organizers felt no water stations belonged). I was rocking a 10:17 average on my way out, but dropped to 10:40 by the end.

My goal was to finish in under an hour. I finished in 53 minutes and 3 seconds. So much better than I could have imagined.

Overall, I was one happy runner.

Bring on next month’s 10k.