I was originally going to run with Noah and Jenny was going to run with Andy, but Noah had skipped a lot of his training and Jenny's abs were pretty sore from a Tae Kwon Do class, so I ran with Andy instead and Jenny and Noah cheered us on. It was a really nice course along the Cotee river, with lots of shade trees. Weather was a little bit warm but pretty decent for June. There were also lots of my running friends there who I had not seen for a while. Andy's last 5k was about a month ago with a 31:40 time, which he ran by himself. For this one he had done some pretty regular training. So, I knew he was capable of going faster but didn't want to push him too hard and risk blowing a PR (as well as possibly turning him off to running). So, the goal was to break 30:00. Andy, Noah and I did a brief warm up (0.33 miles) while we were waiting, then Andy and I headed over to the starting line. The gun went off and we took off with the crowd (about 300 or so people I think). We took off a little bit too fast, first mile at 9:07. Andy was holding up pretty good. Second mile was 9:36 which included a brief slowdown at the water stop. Still, well on track for sub 30:00. Once we were in the last mile Andy was going a little bit faster, especially at the 2.5 mile point. Last mile came in about 9:05. We went through the finish chute but did not look at the clock and I forgot to turn off my Garmin until a little bit later (I stopped it at 28:55). Waiting on the results to get posted. They had really great refreshments - lots of fresh fruit, muffins, Carraba's Italian restaurant food, Smoothie King, Starbucks coffee. One of the amazing things was that this was an inaugural 5K. The organizers included people from my running group, some people from the Y and running coach from the local high school. It was very well run. Andy got a medal for first place in the boys 9 and under group, and Jenny's friend Jodi got first place in her age group. When they called out the name for 1st place, 9 and under Andy's heart sank - they were one letter off on the last name so he thought it was someone else (now that would have been a real bummer if there really was a 9 year old boy whose first and last names were the same except for one letter!) Jenny felt a little bit left out because lots of people did well today, sorry about that Jenny. Thanks for letting me run this one!
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