Run for the Rose 5K

Every year, the Dr. Marnie Rose foundation host the the Run for the Rose 5K to benefit brain cancer research. It has grown every year, and it is now hosted at Reliant Center. They had over 4,000 participants this year. Since Reliant is only a short 15 minute drive from my house, I decided to sign up.

I ran as part of Team Brandi's Memory Rocks On! in memory of my good friend Brandi Ward. Brandi and I were friends from the time we were in elementary school, up through high school, and onto Texas A&M. She was diagnosed with glioblastoma (a very aggressive form of brain cancer) on Christmas Eve 2003. Over the next two years, Brandi would fight the disease with many ups and downs. She would inspire us all with her courage and faith. She even had gone back to her dream job, teaching kindergarten, but in early 2006, God called Brandi home. It was the same weekend she made her national TV debut on Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Now, her mom and sister organize a team in her memory every year to help find a cure for this horrible disease. I believe this year the team was 60 members strong.



I did not have high expectations for the race. I had been taking it easy for the past month, and I had only been running for the two weeks up to the race. I set my goal for the race at 21:00. I kept questioning it though and thought it might be kind of fast. Friday morning, I woke up with what I thought were bad allergies. These continued throughout the weekend. Sunday morning when I woke up, I had a slight headache, and I was pretty stuffed up. I took some Claritin, and I was happy to readjust my race goal to 22:00. I thought 21:00 was kind of fast anyway.

The race started at 8:00AM. I went out at a comfortable pace, but I thought it might be a little fast. I looked at my Garmin around the 1/2 mile mark, and I was running at a 6:30 pace. HOLY COW!! I had to ease off, or so I thought. I slowed down, but my speed must have crept back up. I went past mile 1 in 6:35. I panicked. I've got to slow down. Mile 2 was 6:37. By this point, I decided to try to hang on and see what happened. There was only 1.1 miles left, and I could still finish with a respectable time even if I ran out of gas. With a half mile to go, I continued to feel good. I looked at my watch and saw I would have no problem hitting my original 21:00 goal so I put it on cruise control. I wish I would have looked a little harder. Mile 3 was 6:33. I finished with an official time of 20:01. I could have easily finished under 20:00 if I hadn't packed it in. Total shocker. I had never dreamed I was capable of running under 20:00 in a 5K this weekend, especially, with the way I was feeling. I hadn't done that since high schoool. Let's just say I was more than pleased with my performance.

I went home, and slept on the couch for pretty much all of Sunday afternoon. I also stayed home from work on Monday and a half day on Tuesday. What I thought was allergies, turned out to be a sinus infection that I'm still trying to kill the last of.