St. Paddy's day 5k, oh wait.....

During pregnancy, I really had no idea what life would look like with an infant, let alone what it would do to my body and if a running schedule would be possible at some point. I set one goal, to run the St. Paddy's Day 5k in town, the race I was registered for last year but did not run because it was the weekend after I found out it was pregnant and puking way more than a human should. 

For the last couple of weeks my running buddy and I have been practicing the route and were just wanting to finish in 40 minutes or less (my previous goal was under 30 minutes).  We were feeling fairly confident and excited about both of our first post pregnancy races. 

Woke up this morning, what a cold morning for March in Florida, which really put a damper on my festive attire.  Get downtown, get our numbers, and we are ready to go. The pace programming set on my Garmin to make sure we were able to complete the 5k in our goal time. 

Pre-race picture before to celebrate our 1st 5k post babies. 

Started out great, my Garmin was telling us we were going too fast, so we took it easy, knowing we had hills coming ahead and giggling a little when folks complained about the first little bitty hill. We'd ran the posted route a few times. We "knew" what was ahead. Things were going great. 

Then we go to cross one of the streets and the officer tells us to turn. What???  This is not the route we practiced. Ok, maybe we are running in reverse??  Oh look, we just passed the road we would have turned down to do that. Hmmm. 

After running 2 miles away from the start/finish area and not seeing mile markers, no water station at the halfway like they normally do.........Houston, we have a problem. The next cross street, others started to show concern and started turning and so did we. At this point we knew we were going to be running at least 4 miles. 

We hit 3.1 miles as we approached the original 2 mile marker. I'm so thankful we have been doing at least one 4 mile run a week for the last few weeks.  I felt bad for those we knew that were shooting for a PR, for those who hadn't ran a 5k before and now they are doing over 4 miles, for those little kiddos running with mom and dad and those running with their dogs. 

We crossed the finish line at 4.26 miles. Some runners even went further and had 4.6 miles. On a good note, this was the longest run we have done post pregnancy. We were pacing in line to well surpass our original goal. My girlie got my Starbucks order for me right away. 

So, first race done!  I did well and enjoyed a great run with my running buddy. I feel bad for the race organizers, I can't imagine the complaints they got. 

Now to look at half marathon training and speed work for the Turkey Trot in the fall. Hoping to break my 30 minute goal, that route won't get messed up!!