Race for the Bacon 5K Recap

Last night I ran the Race for the Bacon.  Little did I know that one actually does race for bacon.

My net time for this race was 19:49.  I was pleased to be back on this side of 20 for this race after having had no running for a month and then the light running I have been doing for the past two weeks.

The race start was 6:30 pm.  I packed a bag before I left the house and planned on driving to the race straight from work.  I did not check the weather, which of course is never a good idea!

I arrived to the start an hour early to get my race packet and it was cold.  I had only brought my race singlet and shorts to run in - nothing extra - so I did a shirt switcheroo in my car and put my race t-shirt on to do my warm up in.  I did 2 miles, with 2x2:00 at a quicker pace, which was my warm up for earlier 5Ks.  I felt good during the warm up and it really did warm me up in the cool weather.

I was lucky to find some people that I am friends on social media with, as well as a fellow Oiselle bird before the race.  It is always fun meeting people in the flesh!! Then it was time to start.  I had done my warm up too early and I was already starting to get a little cool again prior to the start.

I was going to try doing race mantras for this race.  I read about these in a number of places and practiced doing two of them during my 4 miler earlier this week.

Mile 1
I had been listening to the NPR link to Ryan Adams concert at Newport Folk Festival and "Let it Ride" was part of the set list.  I had previously written down a line from this song - 'let it ride, let it ride easy down the road' - down in my bullet journal.  I had practiced using this during the beginning of my easy four miler earlier this week.  I figured this was a good mantra for me since I have a tendency to start out too fast, particularly since coming back from injury.  I'm just so excited to run.  After listening to this song all day at work, I had that burned into my head for mile 1 of the race, where my goal was to start easy.

I started off and felt good.  I saw the mile 1 mark and my watch beeped at 6:15.  Better than my 5K effort two weeks ago, but still a little fast, but I felt good.  I still backed off a little so that I wasn't dying during the last mile.

Mile 2
Even though I had written down a mile 2 mantra, I spent most of mile 2 thinking, "Shit! What the hell was my mile 2 mantra?!".  (It was 'chop the wood, carry the water' which I stole from Kate Grace and practiced, but originally I had assigned this to Mile 3 and made a last minute switch that I didn't remember during the race.)
At the mile and a half mark, they had a bacon station. Now, I love bacon, but the smell of bacon while running was a little much.  Regardless I made it through mile 2 feeling good.  My watch beeped at 6:26.

Mile 3
The mantra I assigned to mile 3 was "Fly fast to the finish, then rest" which I took from a postcard Oiselle included with a recent order.  Of course, I didn't call on this until the last 0.5 miles because I was using "chop the wood..." for the first part of this mile.  At around mile 0.5 a woman cheering yelled at me to go catch the first woman.  She was a good distance ahead of me though and I was just trying to finish strong and hold on to my #2 position.  Mile 3 beeped at 6:26 as well.

Finish!
I finished at 19:49 as the second woman.  I was really happy with my experience.  I ran hard and strong and my foot didn't hurt!  Bring on the bacon!

The post-race party included a ham and bacon sandwich, a brownie with bacon and a chocolate chip cookie bacon sandwich.   When it came time for awards, the first three male and first three female finishers all went home with a cooler full of pork products including 7 packs of bacon!  WOAH!  I had a great time even if I was really cold during the post-race party.  The lead singer of the band serenaded me with Hit Me Baby One More Time which was another first for me!