all done

So 4 and 1/2 months of training have come to an end: I raced the 5K at the Riverbank Run today. Let me recap a bit of my morning for you:

I left right when I thought I should to get to Elaine's house in time to carpool and have plenty of time before the 7:30 start of my race (hers started at 8). I forgot construction and ended up being 5 minutes late!
So we got a late start but figured we were still doing okay timewise...wrong! We were going to exit at Ottawa Ave. to get to our parking spot but there was a LOOOOONNNNNGGG line of traffic waiting to exit there, so we continued on thinking we'd take the next exit, College Ave. Wrong again: College is closed for construction and the detour sends you on down the road to Fuller, where we exited and headed on our way back to Michigan Ave. By the time we parked and walked back down to Ottawa Ave. and DeVos Place, the loudspeakers were announcing 5 minutes until the start of the 5K!!!!! I hurried and picked up my packet with my bib and time chip in it, and Elaine was amazing and put the chip on my shoe while I pinned on my bib. I made it to the starting line with 3 minutes to spare, only to get caught up in the 12-minute-mile group.
Needless to say, I started the race pretty much at the back of the pack and spent the whole 3.2 miles trying to play catch-up. My chip time will most likely be at least 4 minutes faster than my start-to-finish time but I feel confident that I ran a strong race. I'll probably update later tonite with my times and place, but for now I'm okay with a 34 minute 5K (start-to-finish).
Elaine ran the 10K and ended up running pretty much the whole thing in the rain, but she finished strong and we decided next year we're running the same race. It just wasn't the same without our running buddy there to encourage us when the going got tough!!!!

All in all it was a good experience, and we're setting our sights higher for next year: 25K here we come!!!

EDIT:

I just checked my race results, and instead of shaving time like I had hoped, I ended up running it a couple minutes slower!!! My chip time was 32:06, clock time was 36:14. I had wanted to shave time rather than add it, but I felt more confident about my run today. I don't get it...