It's Saturday morning and it's race day. I'm always up early on race day... I'm talking 4:30am early. My family is still sleep and that's ok, because we have some time. I'm pretty excited because I'm running in the first NFL Back to Football 5k and my boys are getting their first experience running in the Fun Run. I never did anything like this when I was a kid and I was happy that my boys got to do something like this early in their lives.
Realizing and understanding the benefits of living healthy, has given me a strong desire to create and mold an atmosphere of health and positive activity into their upbringing. It's extremely important to me that they grasp this lifestyle sooner, rather than later, like I did.
Anyway, I was happy that my boys and I had the opportunity to create a positive memory in their childhood.
I went downstairs to get ready like I normally do before a race. Started putting my gear on and getting my thoughts together about how I would approach this race.
My goal was to race it. I thought about the 5k that I did earlier this year. I finished it in 30:18. Perfect conditions down in Ocean City, MD and that was what I call a flat course. I was shooting for a sub 30 finish on this one.
It was really cool to have 1982 Super Bowl MVP Mark Moseley literally kick off the race!! After the national anthem was sung, he stood in front of the racers and kicked a football similar to how he did when he was playing. Now obviously, it didn't go as far, but it was much further than I could've kicked it. That was a pretty nice touch to the overall nostalgia of being there as a Redskins fan and participating in the very first run of the series at FedEx field. I'm hoping that next year, more Redskins and former Redskins will show up!!
Well we started in waves and I'm a slower runner, so we started in the middle to back off the pack. The faster runners went first and then the slower runners. The countdown from 10 began and we were off!!
I hadn't run most of the week and I was scheduled for a long run of 8 miles on Sunday as I'm tapering for my first half marathon. I wanted to really race this one and remembering the description of the course to be flat, I figured this would be great race to PR.
It wasn't as flat as Ocean City. There were some inclines... nothing really to complain about but I'd have to work to get under 30 minutes. So I felt pretty good and the strategy was to stay around 10:30/mile and really push it at the end.
I looked at my Garmin for my first mile time... 9:33. Agh!! I laughed to myself and said, "well there goes the PR." There was no way I could hold on to that for 3 miles!! But I tried... mile 2 was finished in 10:21. I knew my PR was long gone.
So I said I would make the best of this race and keep pushing. I began thinking about the times that I wanted to shoot for. I wanted to get under 33 minutes and decided to commit to that goal. That would be better than 11 minute miles and I could be happy with that.
My final mile would be done at 10:15, according to my Garmin. I ran 3.23 miles in 32:48... a pace of 10:10/mile. That's not too bad for a dzlrunner.
After the 5k was completed, me and the family walked around FedEx a little. They allowed us to go inside the stadium and see the field. I noticed that the field wasn't even painted yet for the big game against the Eagles on Monday Night Football. I took a gaze around the entire stadium and said to myself, this place is gonna be electric in a couple of days!! I got excited just thinking about it.
They began to announce the winners of the 5k and we started looking for where the kids fun run was gonna be held.
It took us some time, because it didn't seem like anyone had any answers. So if I had to complain about anything, it would have been the circles we kept going around asking about the kids run.
We finally found where the kids were lining up. My boys Kamari and Kameron were participating in this half mile run and I was hoping they would do well.
The kids were split up in two groups, by age... 10 and up were in the first group and anyone under age 10 would be in the second group. My oldest son, Kamari, is 10 and he was lined up right in front. I said to myself, "well would you look at that!" I was happy to see some type of competitiveness from him, since he's pretty low key. My youngest son is 6 and he is naturally competitive. I couldn't see him, but I was sure he would make a good showing.
What was really cool was, the kids were able to run out of the big Redskins helmet!! This was the same one the players run out of at home games!! This was so awesome and every time my kids see the big helmet on the field at the start of a Redskins game they can say that they ran out of the big helmet too!
Well the starting horn went blew and the kids came running out of that tunnel like bats outta hell!! I saw my oldest son and he was going!! I expected to see my youngest son in the next group and my running partner told me that Kam had broke out with the older kids!! I didn't see him!!
I was recording it on my phone. I stopped recording and looked in the tunnel... I didn't see Kameron!! I was pretty bummed, but then I thought to look on my video.
Lol... as the video came to a close, I saw Kameron bringing up the rear!! His face was determined!! I guess he said he wasn't running with the little kids!! He could hang with the big kids. Me and my running partner laughed because that's who Kam is. He loves taking on a challenge!!
Overall the morning was quite enjoyable and I was happy to have my wife and kids there, supporting and being involved in something positive and something healthy. I continue to look back over the couple of years that I've been working towards a healthier lifestyle. I'm happy with the progress I've made and looking forward to continued improvement of myself and my family.
You can do it too!! Just decide to take the first step towards improvement each day, and you're on that journey of success. It's that simple.
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