Friday was First Friday on the Bentonville Square and the Bentonville School Foundation hosted a 5K run with the festivities. The First Friday is a fun celebration that happens once a month and brings out all kinds of food vendors, music and dancers, and vendor booths that relate to the theme for the month. May had a general spring theme and included martial arts demonstrations and a French vendor selling all kinds of crepes!
Back to the race! The race had a 6:30PM start time and I got down to the square around 5:30. There was hardly anyone around for the race even though nearly 700 people were registered. Various team members were hanging around and eventually everyone headed off in their own directions for warmup. I chose a warmup route that was flat and took me by my friend Kyla's house. She hadn't left yet for the race so she joined up with me for the return to the square. We got back and the people had all magically appeared! There were lines at the porta potties so we headed down to a top secret one at the construction site for the future Splash Pad/Ice Rink site just a block away. Nikki had pointed it out during the start of the warmup and I didn't think I would actually be heading back to it.
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| The Starting Line of the Race |
We headed back to the start line and I kept running into friends. The start line was filling up quickly and there were lots of kids moving to the front of the corral which looked like it could turn into a bit of a cluster! I got to the left side of the road where I thought it would be less chaotic. I took a last minute look at my shoes and decided to double knot them and try to prevent my shoes from coming untied like they did during Race for the Cure. The gun went off and we headed out 2nd Street.
The race was relatively simple with only two turns and the turn around point. It was an out and back along 2nd and J Streets that was relatively flat but had some slight inclines and an uphill finish. I heard my Garmin beep at each mile but I made an effort to not look at my watch. I had no clue how I was doing during the race...I was just trying to maintain a nice steady pace and not take any walk breaks! I cheered for all my Rush friends as they made their way back from the turn around point. I tried to pick up the pace some on the return trip down 2nd Street because I knew there would be a tough finish to tackle.
The end of the race included a downhill rolling straight into the uphill finish. As I came out of the downhill, I looked towards the finish line and it was a sea of people! I heard Mike Rush on the bullhorn and I'm pretty sure he called for me to use Quick Legs. He definitely told me to run through to him which was good because I really couldn't tell where the actual finish was. I gave it my all and was shocked to see a 2 on the clock meaning I was going to finish under 30 minutes! My final time was 28:24 which is about 40 sec off my PR time. Not too bad and much better than I was anticipating.
The race was relatively simple with only two turns and the turn around point. It was an out and back along 2nd and J Streets that was relatively flat but had some slight inclines and an uphill finish. I heard my Garmin beep at each mile but I made an effort to not look at my watch. I had no clue how I was doing during the race...I was just trying to maintain a nice steady pace and not take any walk breaks! I cheered for all my Rush friends as they made their way back from the turn around point. I tried to pick up the pace some on the return trip down 2nd Street because I knew there would be a tough finish to tackle.
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| Looking from the finish...notice the hill near the trees! |
The end of the race included a downhill rolling straight into the uphill finish. As I came out of the downhill, I looked towards the finish line and it was a sea of people! I heard Mike Rush on the bullhorn and I'm pretty sure he called for me to use Quick Legs. He definitely told me to run through to him which was good because I really couldn't tell where the actual finish was. I gave it my all and was shocked to see a 2 on the clock meaning I was going to finish under 30 minutes! My final time was 28:24 which is about 40 sec off my PR time. Not too bad and much better than I was anticipating.
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| Here's some of the girls! Me, Kyla, Nikki, and Robyn! Robyn's husband Justin was jealous of the girl's pic so he got one of his own! |
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