Run for Pi, and PR!

On Pi Day, I ran for Pi. I did not eat any pie.

Hi! I'm Krista and I'm one of those annoying runners who poses for cameras!

The 5K distance doesn't particularly interest me. My first race was a 5K in August, 2011, and I only did that one to motivate myself to keep on running, since I had just picked up on running in July. I didn't run another 5K until June, 2012, and I only ran that because it was at Cedar Point. I ran the Run for Pi, which technically isn't a 5K because the official measurements had it at 3.14 miles as opposed to 3.1, only because I needed to run 3 miles on that day. Oh, and I like gimmicks.

I'm the awkwardly-positioned one.

I didn't have a plan for this race in the name of geekery; I expected that I'd take it easy and start off around 8:05, then see where that would take me. No chip timing on this one, so I got myself as close to the starting line as possible without being in the way of those "serious" runners. In the relatively few races that I've run, I've learned that at the start it's easy to get sucked into a pace much faster than I have any business attempting. That photo to the left shows me barely a tenth of a mile into the race, moving at 6:37. Whooooa, doggy.

I got my legs in check and slowed myself down to finish the first mile in 7:10. At the beep of my Garmin, I deliberated whether or not I needed to pull back closer to 8:00, or just play it out at that pace, which felt good and, honestly, kinda easy. I went with the latter and finished mile 2 in 7:06.

When my Garmin beeped again, I was confused. How am I doing this? Why won't, nay, can't I slow down? How badly am I going to hurt later? Am I gonna spew when I'm finished? There's a first time for everything. Still, I felt good. That is, until the course started playing head games with me. I had run 3-milers at the race location plenty of times, since that's where group run takes place. To add a little distance, the race organizers had to add a few extra turns here and there, and they decided to do it all toward the end. First, there was this annoying little left turn then u-turn thing.

Then, where we usually do turn to wrap up the group run, there WAS no turn!

HI!

At that point, I was perturbed because I knew exactly where the finish was, and I knew that I was going to need to pass it in order to get back to it. Eventually, there it was--that big, inflatable arch all like, "Here I am, Krista! But you aren't allowed to cut through that parking lot to get to me! You must run around it to get to me (insert Nelson laugh here)!" Despite the mockery that I made up in my head, I couldn't help but cheese it up when I saw a camera. My facial expression and gesture demonstrate my glee to be almost finished and that, since I had just finished mile 3 at 7:06, I was about to take a big, fat PR.

Maybe it was the lady dressed up like a piece of pie...

And there I am, finishing up that last .14 in 55.6 seconds. I'm not sure what that facial expression is all about. I don't remember anything really interesting or gawk-worthy going on to my right, but I look pretty disturbed by whatever it is I was seeing. Or maybe I was just pooped and very much ready to be finished.

3.14 miles in 22:19. Although it wasn't a true 5K--they even had a sign at 3.1 that read "If this was (sic) a 5K, you would be done!--I'm taking it as a 5K PR (-1:27!!!!).

To make the Pi PR even sweeter (get the play on words?), I won my age group! And I wasn't the only one in it! I am still waiting for official results to show up online, but awards went to the top 6 or 7 in my age group, which leads me to believe that there may have only been 6 or 7 of us. Still, I was on top! BOO-YAH!