Megan's First 5k

On Saturday May 31, 2015 Megan ran her very first 5k.  Last summer I ran the Run or Dye race with some friends and Megan and Alice came to watch.  Megan really wanted to run the race the next year so when the registration opened up in December I signed us both up.

True confessions - this is not my favorite type or race.  I'd much rather run a race with timed corrals but I did this for her.  I also ran 5 miles in the morning before the race so I was not trying to run this for a personal record of any kind.  

It rained on the way to the race which was a good thing as it cooled it off just a little bit from what it was earlier in the morning.  It felt cooler for the race than it did at 5:30am when I started my 5 mile training run.

This year we made sure we got there early and got in line so we could be in one of the first couple waves.  This made a huge difference to me on the course crowding.  It also helped that we didn't have to wait around as long in the sun.  As you can see we got precolored and then we were off.

The race was basically a big tour of the parking lot of NRG (aka Reliant) Stadium.  As you can see from the screen shot we made a lot of hairpin like turns in the parking lot, which is enough to render the GPS almost useless.  I'm going to assume the course distance really was 3.1 miles and not the 2.8 miles my Garmin picked up.


I gave Megan my GymBoss to hold onto so she would be in control of the intervals.  I wanted to slow her down at the beginning because I knew that 3 miles was a lot for her to handle.  We started the race off with 30 seconds running and 30 seconds walking.\

Color Zone Time

No cups, they handed out full bottles instead of cups.  

Around the midway point I let Megan decide if she wanted to go faster.  She decided to try a 1:30/:30 interval and then stretched it to 1:30/1:00 so she had more time to drink on the walk breaks.

She struggled a little at the end but she finished her first 5k with a smile on her face in 38:12.  I was very proud of her and had much more fun than I thought I would.

As for the race, I don't know if the threat of storms scared people off but it seemed much less crowded this time around which I appreciated greatly.

Looking for our next 5k adventure together.