2015 River City 5K

This past weekend Braden and I got to run our first race together in a little over a month at the River City 5K in Little Rock. I had been working out the kinks in my Achilles area and building my distance and times back to where they were before the injury and Braden was hoping to get a new PR with his brand new running shoes.

Everything was going great in preparing for the race. A few days before the race on our last 5K training run, Braden ran a 26:48, which was only 13 seconds off his best time, and it was all I could do to keep up with him because I was a little tired from running over the previous four days. I was glad to see him do well on a training run with all the allergy and coughing fits that he had over the past few weeks and we both felt confident that he would do great at the race.

Our pre-race prayer ritual

Unfortunately, things didn't go the way we had planned. The night before the race, something didn't sit well with his stomach and he threw up the blackberry pie he had for dessert that evening. When it was time to get up, he didn't want anything to eat, but he said he felt good for the race. 

The race time temperature wasn't too bad, but it was a little humid. We got off to a great start and Braden was running great, but then a little before the 1 mile mark he said that his tummy wasn't feeling that good. We basically labored the rest of the course, stopping and starting several times with plenty of walking, and finishing with a time of 30:33.

Below is our video finish at the 15:50 mark:

It stinks because, for the first time in a while, his training was terrific, but because of some pie, he didn't get the run that he wanted (lesson learned...no desserts the night before a race!). Despite all that, he did finish first in his age group and for the first time since I've run with him, I got to place in my age group with a third place finish.

Our next race is the Rock Run 8K in less than a couple of weeks and it will also be a Grand Prix non-championship race as well.