McGuire's is in the bag!

I did it! I had a really fun time and enjoyed all the craziness! There were 11,000+ runners and walkers, many in costume and almost all in green. It was an incredible scene!

How did I do? In a word ... AWESOME! I took 26 seconds off my previous best of 29:14 and posted a 28:47.84 time. It was off my predicted time of 30:03, but definitely in the right direction!

I ran with Chris G, one of my Daily Mile buddies. I knew he would push me. I told him to go ahead and leave me behind if I was slowing him down. He did, but only right at the end. He did it so he could finish and then take pictures of me. How cool is that?

Here I am with Chris

Here I am with Jackie, Chris's wife, who just completed the Couch to 5k program and finished in 42:06

And here are Chris and Jackie

This was also Cookie Amy's first 5k! Carol, the woman who inspired me to start running ran with her to motivate her along. She said she did mostly walks, and that is OK. It was good for Carol too, as she is getting ready for a race next weekend and didn't really want to push herself. Amy finished in 59:18.

I got a shot of Regina nearing the finish line. Her time was 1:05:39. I thought she would do better, but she was walking with Michelle and Kaitlan and having a great time. They ran the last few yards to the finish line.

The after party was fun, but way too crowded. We stuck around for a while and enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a good time.

Chris really started fast out the gate. Once we were able to cross the timing mats he took off like a rocket. We were dodging people and jumping curbs. I swear he was throwing people down and hurdling them! I felt like we were going too fast. That I couldn't maintain that pace for the whole run. I had a hard time trying to keep up with him. I expected that, as he is a sub-8 5k runner. He didn't care about his time and was more interested in helping me, which is really cool.

I was really breathing hard and he would slow down and catch up and then speed up and I tried hard. I can't say how many times I just wanted to slow down and walk. But I didn't. There wasn't any juice in the tank when I got to the finish line. I couldn't speed up. I did maintain pace and cross with a big smile. I knew I had done well. My time averages to a 9:17 pace, which while it isn't speedy by race standards, it is quite speedy for me. I'm super happy with it!