My first race of 2014 was the We Believe in Our Children 5k in Pensacola, Florida. It was a rousing success! Below are the gritty details.

STATS

You can view the official stats below, or for those of you who might be skeptical, here are the official documents.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

I woke up at 5:30 AM and fixed oatmeal for breakfast – this was a smart move. I had plenty of fuel for the entire race.
I was fast – for the first half-mile or so, I shook off the nerves and warmed up the engines, then blasted through the rest of the course. About 2.5 miles into it, I was feeling pretty fatigued, but kept the peddle to the floor.
I had fun – given that I really, really dislike running in the cold, my mind and body held up well.

It was cold, much more cold than what we, in the Florida panhandle, are accustomed to; at race time, the temperature hovered around 40º
I lined up too far back in the finish line, behind kids and other slowish people. I didn’t know they would be so much slower than me. I’m hoping they do a better job of putting the faster people in the front next time. There were even some walkers in the first group of people.
There weren’t any discernible mile markers on the course – though my RunKeeper kept me mostly aware of where I was – I only have the time notifications set for every 10 minutes and don’t have the distance enabled, meaning it only tells me 10 minutes (then 20) have passed, and since I didn’t wear headphones and had the volume all the way down, it wasn’t super easy to know where I was.

Running is fun, even when it’s too hot, too cold, too early or too late. If you have doubts about your ability to enjoy a race, know that you inevitably will – to runners, running is always full of awesome!
5k’s don’t offer very good swag – I can’t complain as I scored a free entry (and the race raised money for local public schools), but It would be nice, right? In this case we got a free long-sleeve t-shirt and some snacks/drinks post-race.