Celebrity 5K

We had another race this weekend. Luckily it was 10 miles shorter than my last couple of competitions.



The Celebrity 5K to benefit the Homeless was this past Sunday on Miami Beach which we went to with our friends Andy, Glenna, Kevin and Marissa.



The weather was beautiful (sunny, breezy and in the upper 70's), it was well organized, lots of entertainment and there were plenty of Port-O-Potties at the start (my personal favorite). They did however use the term "celebrity" pretty loosly in this case. With the exception of course, of the Queen of Miami herself, Ms. Gloria Estefan.



Don't ask me who the guy is behind her.

The race started at the Miami Children's Museum. While we all hung out before the race, we split up at the start since I wanted to run for time. I hadn't done a 5K since the Turkey Trot in November and wanted to see if I could beat it (28:31). Jer and I took off at the start and maneuvered our way through the throngs of people in front of us. There was a pretty decent crowd, around 3,000 and we we didn't bother to make our way up to the front in the starting gate while we were waiting, which we paid for when the race started.

I have to admit, I dont really remember much about the run. It seemed so much shorter after running a couple Half-Marathons, but it wasn't easy since I was running at a faster pace than I normally do. Plus the whole race was into a headwind facing the Miami sun, which is NOT cool. Oh and the bridge...I forgot about that. That sucked too. So basically I was not happy the whole time I was running. Jeremy told me later, he looked over at me during the run and I looked really angry, so he didn't talk to me. Funny, that's WHY I needed him to talk to me, to take my mind off my misery. It was pretty nice to see mile marker 3 though and know I didn't have 10 more miles to go.

All my grumpiness paid off. I came in at 26:45, a new 5k PR!!!!

My chip time said 27:42, but they didn't have a mat at the start and were going by clock time. Here are the old splits:
1) 9:10
2) 8:26 (not bad for the wind and bridge)
3) 8:21
.1) :45

I came in 11th out of 137 in my female age group (30-34)!!! I thought maybe we were just slow, but I looked in the age group under mine (25-29) and I would have been 19th out of 160, so it's still a pretty decent time, (dumb I know, but I was curious). :)

I was so excited! That is 1:44 off my best time! I have to say alot of this is thanks to Jeremy. Even though he didn't "talk" to me, I would have slowed down without him. Of course, for 26 minutes he pissed me off, but my lazy-ass needs that push. I would have never run that fast if he hadn't been there. Funny how he pushes me without saying a word.

After the race we met up with everyone and went to the afterparty at Nikki Beach, where they fed us a gourmet brunch (fancy bagels) and gave out awards.



It was really nice and I joke, but the spread was really good. Also, it was the first 5K I have ever been in that gave out medals to all finishers. And not dinky ones either, but really nice spinner medals, pretty impressive. Afterwards we hopped on a shuttle that took us back to the start (another very well organized part of the race).



All in all it was a great run. If anyone is in Miami in March looking for a 5K to run, I highly recommend it. And it's for a really good cause.