37:12

That's my time.

This past Saturday was the Salt Lake marathon/5K. My friend, Julieanne and I ran it and we had a really good time. She was a great partner and kept me pumped and motivated throughout the course.

For the past 9 or 10 weeks I have been running several times a week preparing for this run. It has been tough and I still have a hard time deciding if I want to stick with running. If you've read my past entries, you've heard me describe my struggles. But, through it all, I kept at it, determined to run. Each week I kept expecting for things to get easier and while I improved (slowly, very slowly) running was never easy for me. The last two weeks I was really down and thinking my training had failed me. I thought to myself, "I cannot run this 5K, I just can't do it." I've been told that a huge part of running is mental, so as you can tell, my training was only helping me get so far. Who can run long distance when the whole time they're telling themselves that they can't?

Well, I can. And I did. I had an attitude adjustment the morning of the 5K. I planned my dinner the night before and my breakfast and outfit for the day of. I had trained physically, now it was time for the mental part to kick in (it maybe would've helped if I had started my mental training a little sooner ::shrugging shoulders::).

My original goal was to run the entire 5K without having to slow down and walk. Sadly, we stopped a few times. However, with that said, I took only the necessary time to recover, slow my heart rate and catch my breath. We never slowed for longer than a minute. I ran at least 98% of the course - a large improvement from last year but my biggest achievement was my time. I improved by a whole 5 minutes! So what if I didn't run 100% of the course, I improved my time, stamina, and my distance. Overall, I was happy with my performance.