I still can't believe it took me until the age of 31 to run in my first 5K. Especially since I put this on my bucket list years ago and at any given time there are multiple 5K's almost every weekend within a 20 miles radius of my house. The problem for me has always been allocating weekend time to tackle this item. I spend almost every weekend training in Muay Thai or boxing and when I'm not doing that we are training / testing / hunting our German Shorthaired Pointers. It's amazing how few free weekends I feel I have available. But regardless the time finally arrived to commit to one. I recruited my dear friend and "Ride or Die" Maribel Estades to lace up some sneaks and run with me.
Maribel doing her best Vanna White
We choose to do J's Run in Bethlehem, PA which helps raise awareness and money to finding a cure for Pancreatic Cancer. It's named J's Run for two amazing and loved women named Joan Stein and Jennifer Reeve's who both lost their lives to this often incurable disease. Although I have luckily never been personally affected by Pancreatic Cancer I have had family members diagnosed with both Prostate and Colon Cancer. Quite frankly cancer in any form sucks so I thought it would be a great cause to support. Maribel has some experience with Pancreatic Cancer as she sells the fine needle aspiration needle (FNA) that goes into the pancreas and collects tissue samples to determine if cancer cells are present in a patient. She was just recently in an O.R. when a patient was diagnosed with this awful disease. So for her personally she was proud to run in the race to be part of the solution and not only the detection.
Please note how nice of a job Maribel did at putting my number on for me. Now look at Maribel's number....ya...not such a good job.
As far as the actual race it was a pretty cool experience. I completed the two goals I had set for myself which was to finish in under 30 minutes and to never stop running. I ran slower than I normally do but having never run a 5K I really focused on keeping a pace I knew that I would be comfortable with. I was amazed at how much I appreciated volunteers ringing bells and cheering the runners on. I actually laughed out loud when the fella running the water station was blasting the Rocky theme song. What boxer / fighter doesn't want to hear that!? Overall it was a really good time and we both felt great when we finished. We decided that we are going to do a few more 5K's this summer and try to improve upon our times. If all goes well maybe I'll give a 10K a try and who knows maybe next year I can talk Maribel into doing a half marathon with me. :)
