Lungs4Life 5K

Okay, I'm a little behind the times and here I had promised to do better. So, in thinking of something wildly amusing that I could write about, I realized that 1 - my life is really not all that exciting; but, 2 - I had not given my race report for my last 5K.
Lung cancer is something that I know all too well about. On September 21, 2001, I lost my big brother to the horrible disease. I miss him every day and watching him go through it truly changed and saved my life. So, when I first saw the race information for the Lungs4Life 5K, I knew I had to do it. I had no idea at that time that my stepdad and 2 stepbrothers were doing it as well in honor of their late wife/mother.
This was a first time event for the Caine Halter branch of the YMCA, so I was not sure what the turn out would be like. Some of our local races garner 2000 runners, some only 150. I thought this would fall somewhere in between. When I went to pick up the race bibs the evening before the race, I didn't see a whole lot of people, so in my mind this confirmed that the field would be relatively small. I was bib number 229 and Jeff was 230. I still don't know how he always manages to get a number 3 (which is MY lucky number).
Jeff and I got up Saturday morning a little later than we had intended. You see, we are still in half marathon training for Kiawah, so before the 5K we were scheduled to do 7 miles. We set out some water in downtown G'Vegas and hit the course. Jeff's stomach started acting up around mile 3.5, but he's such a trooper he kept on running. Once he looked at his watch, he determined that we would not have enough time to get in the full 7, so we needed to stop around 5 or 6. Jeff is my official time keeper. Not because I don't know how to tell time (although I realized this past Saturday that I never moved my watch back when the time changed weeks ago), but because I just don't have a good concept of time outside of my professional life and left up to me, we would constantly be either really late or really early everywhere. At mile 5, we were back to our car, so we headed over the Y (after we went back and picked up our empty water bottles, in case the litter police ever reads this). You can imagine our surprise and shock when we saw the traffic. People and cars were everywhere! We had to park quite a distance from the Y and walk over the start line. By the time we got there, no time to pick up our chips, which (like cheese dip!) cost extra. I owe the budget $4. On the way to the start line, we saw some of our No Boundaries friends that we had "coached" through their 5K training program in the spring. It was great to see them giving back to the next No Boundaries group and continuing their running. We lined up in the back because after running 5 miles, we planned to just take it easy. The horn blew and off we went. Being in the back, we had a lot of walkers to dodge. I don't mean to sound derogatory about walkers, they have every right to participate in events and I'm glad that they do, but for God's sake, if you hear, see or otherwise know a runner is coming up behind you, please at least make some attempt to move over, even if it's just a little bit! During Mile 1, I saw my nieces Breanna and TJ. TJ was struggling with a side stitch so I tried to tell her to take some deep belly breaths and pace herself. The Garmin beeped at the end of Mile 1 and I didn't look down. I felt that I had probably run it slow. During Mile 2, I go behind 2 people with a "In Memory Of _______" bib on their back. I had looked for one when I picked up our bibs the evening before so that Jeff and I both could wear Gary's name proudly when we ran, but could not find one. I have to admit that I became extremely emotional. Each step I took at this point, I choked back tears. Tears for the loss my family feels; tears for the fact that Gary never got to meet Jeff and see how happy I am; tears for the anger I feel over this horrible disease; and tears for the pain that I know Gary felt every day, but never complained about. You see, even though we weren't the closest siblings, my brother was my hero. He would get his chemo treatment in the morning and work on putting up a fence in the afternoon. He rarely showed his pain and protected me from it until the very end. I often think of him and all he went through when I run, gaining inspiration and motivation from him, even now. I know that when I hurt on the course or during training, he hurt worse. So, during Mile 2, I reflected a lot and thought that my sobs were going to burst out of my chest right on the course. I'm glad that they didn't because Jeff would have thought I was in the middle of a breakdown like I had last year during marathon training where I stopped in the middle of the street on a cold, dreary day and started crying for no reason at all. So, I did the only thing I knew to do - I ran. I kept running and felt really good. I felt that we were in the middle of the pack and I was fine with that. I had run so many races at the back of the pack that I was happy to move up to lower middle class. At the 3 mile mark, there was suddenly a turn and a short, steep incline. I looked at Jeff and told him that I had to slow down some. As soon as I reached the top, I sped back up. During this entire time, I had never looked at my Garmin, so I thought I was on a usual pace to finish at about 34 or 35 minutes. We came around the corner and saw Rob, my stepbrother. He cheered us on and we were on to the finish line. I saw 32 on the clock. WHAT?? As I crossed the finish line, I looked down for the first time and stopped the Garmin at 32:02, my fastest 5K ever. I'm amazed that it came after a 5 mile warm up. Only 2 minutes and 3 seconds to cut off for the Electric City Gobbler on Thanksgiving morning. I can do this, I know that I can. Oh yeah, in case you are wondering, my splits were: 1 mile = 10:41; 2 mile = 10:15; and 3 mile = 9:54; .1 mile = 9:07.