I am now a "seasoned" runner.

We did it!
Saturday Hubby and I, along with the kiddos riding in the jogging stroller, ran our first 5k race.
And we didn't die.

Hooray!!

Really, it wasn't bad at all- just challenging enough that I felt like I was being stretched, but not so hard that I felt like I couldn't finish the race.

It was a beautiful morning too; nice and cool and sunny. Perfect for a race.




I've been wanting to run in a 5k for over 2 years now, so this is a huge accomplishment in my book. About a year after I lost all of my baby weight from having  Ethan, (I was super inspired by watching the journey of the contestants on The Biggest Loser- love that show!) I decided that running a 5k was a goal I wanted to shoot for.
I wanted to start training for it; then we got pregnant with Eliana so I decided to wait til after she was born.

She's almost 2 now!

Needless to say, I didn't start training right away. :)
We started running this past spring, and ran all through those hot, sweaty days of summer.
Actually we had to go early in the morning, and later at night,
and even then it was still in the 90's-100 degree mark.
Ick.
I am SO thankful for fall.

So here are the few pictures I got of our experience this weekend.
Obviously, there are none of us actually running, since we were a little busy.
Maybe next time we'll take someone else along with us to take pictures.

The view of the crowd. Quite a few people showed up!

A local news anchor was the emcee, and there were karate demonstrations,

as well as health and wellness demonstrations/booths.

We got there about an hour before the race. 

Plenty of time to register, and for the kids to play in the dirt and explore. 

We used a nice big tree to stretch against

to get nice and warmed up for the race.

The kids like to stretch too!

They are so cute.

I'm not really sure what I'm doing here- Tim caught me by surprise!

I decided not to wear any makeup because let's face it;

 it would just run everywhere anyway from all the sweat.

Post-race we had orange juice and bananas and granola bars to recover.

Eliana really liked the orange juice.

I think she drank a whole can by herself!

Me and Hubby post-race. He's so handsome!! *giggle*

We all got medals for finishing the race.

Our time was 31:29 - not too bad for our first 5k!

Next time, we hope to go even faster.

We're thinking of doing a "turkey trot" 5k on Thanksgiving morning.

How about you? Have you ever run/walked a 5k? Would you like to??

A great resource that we used was The Couch to 5k Plan.

We'd never ran before, and this plan gradually builds you up from running 

 60 sec. intervals to running 30 min. straight over the course of 8 weeks.

 It works! If you're interested, try it out!

Don't use excuses; just do it.

 You'll be glad you did.