Hello race fans! Saturday morning was a balmy 39 degrees here in Indianapolis as several hundred people all showed up at the same place to run a 5K known as the Jingle Bell Run!  This event supports the Arthritis Foundation.

My gf and I headed downtown to Conseco Fieldhouse where the event would start and finish.  My gf was the Volunteer Coordinator for this year’s run/walk so we arrived at 6:00am to start getting the volunteers checked-in and sent to their assignments. I was in charge of volunteer t-shirts and lanyards and pretty much at my gf’s beck & call for a few hours.  It was a good time helping get this awesome event underway!

With a 9:00am start, I ventured to the start line around 8:50am.  If you read my blog regularly then you know I ran The Drumstick Dash with a buddy of mine on Thanksgiving and did great!  So for this race I lined up with the 9-min/mile pace peeps and even stepped to the front of the group.  It was chilly, but with Under Armour and gloves it was no big deal. It felt really good being an entire corral closer to the start line than “normal” too! It’s amazing what becomes normal since almost 12 months ago to the day I couldn’t run a single mile and started at a 12 minute/mile pace when I did run.

I flipped on my iPod to a little “Flo Rida: The Club Can’t Handle Me” as the race started.  The first bit of the race was grueling as the wind picked up and the chill crept into everything.  After I rounded the corner off Pennsylvania Street the wind was gone and things improved.  The cold air was a challenge as it always is for me but I felt good as I finished Mile #1.  Mile #2 whipped past in no time and the next thing you know I was crossing Penn again to head toward Monument Circle.  After a quick three blocks or so I was rounding another corner onto Pennsylvania again and could see the finish line.

About that time “How Far We’ve Come” by Matchbox 20 kicked on the headphones and I took off.  I could see the clock had just crossed the 27 minute mark and I really wanted to beat 28 minutes.  As I approached the finish I realized I could potentially beat 00:27:30 so it was a race the last few feet to cross the line before the big three-zero went by.

I always forget about those few seconds between the official clock start and individual time based on crossing the start line.  Official Time ended up being 00:27:04.8 which was good for a new 5K PR! I beat my last 5K time by 2 minutes and 39 seconds.

Next stop, The Disney World Marathon January 9th!

Happy Training!