My First 5K Run

This last Mother’s Day, I decided to do something a little different. My mom isn’t in the same city as me, so to do my part, besides my annual phone call and list of thank yous, I ran in the Forzani Mother’s Day Run.

I’ve never run any significant distance all at the same time, and on purpose before, so I was a bit nervous. It was only 5K, so to prepare, I went out the night before and ate a big fatty steak and drank a lot of alcohol. Just like in the Olympics.

In the morning, I walked from my friend’s house in Inglewood (did I mention I had been too, um… tired to drive home the night before?) to the Calgary Tower where the race started.

I should mention that the only reason I knew about the race was that the Track and Field coach at my school has forced every kid on the team to be in the race. I respect that kind of abuse of power. Also, since it raises money for a good cause (I think), it was hard for me to beg out. So when I got there, dozens of kids and teachers from my school were huddled together, waiting to go. We had a banner, and the girls were dancing to the music, and the TV cameras even came over and shot some coverage of us that I understand was on A Channel later that night. I missed it, seeing as I have no cable.

Anyhow, after the wheelchair athletes left, and then the elite 10K runners, and the elite 5K runners, and the 5-minute-per-K runners, and the… well you get the idea… eventually I started running with my colleague from school. He set a pretty brisk pace, but I just kept running and even chatting with him from time to time. We seemed to be passing a lot of people, but lots of very small children dodged past us as though we were actually moving backwards. I hate children.

Several times during the run I felt tired and would have stopped if I hadn’t been running with somebody else. When it really started to hurt, I used the mantra I had thought up the day before: This hurts less than childbirth. It worked!

We had enough energy left to sprint the last 100m or so, and the next day my time was in the paper: 27:07! Not shabby for a first run, without training, so I’m told. I may just start long-distance training!

Ed’s Note: HA-HA-HAH-AH-HAAAA-HHAH-HAAHAHA!!! Whew! That was a good one!

After the race, they clipped the little timing chip from my shoe, and then we were pummelled with free bananas, apples, OJ, water, granola bars, yogourt bars, newspapers, roses, protein bars, and beer. Yes, the beer was low carb and low alcohol, but it was free.

All in all it was a great experience, and I’ll definitely do it again. I don’t anticipate moving up to a 10K, but I could certainly work on my 5K time. At least I’ll have an excuse to buy cool sneakers.