BiG Cardio 5K

A little back story first:

The first…well I guess second 5K that I ever ran and the first one in S. Florida was the 4Kids of South Florida BiG Cardio 5K. My first officially 5K was back in 2007 when and I did it with my college.

 

When I moved the Florida, I ended up have to take a really crap job that paid well below standard in my field and hardly even meet living standards in general, so I for sure didn’t have the money to pay for a gym membership or anything…so I started running as a way for me to stay in shape. Well running and not being able to afford food kept me pretty small. LOL.

I would ran with Jake (my dbf – dog best friend) about a mile or two every night after work and then I would do a few weights in the house, but nothing major and I went from being in pretty good shape to being in…eh shape.

About 3 months after I left the crap job and stared working at Banyan in 2010 I heard about a 5K race that Banyan sponsored a team for, and for some reason I thought how hard can it be right…I run with Jake every night a mile or so…a 5K is only 3.15 miles. I can do this.

Boy was I mistaken. Yes, I ran the whole thing, but boy was I crap. My time back in 2010 was a pathetic 36 min. I could have basically walked the entire thing and done better.

Anyway. That was in 2010…lets fast forward.

2011 my time was 32:17

2012 my time was 27:12

Now it was 2013 and I was ready to do this. I signed up again…after some debate and the Puerto Rico Half Marathon talk falling though. I would have rather done the Half Marathon in Puerto Rico, but not enough people wanted to go and to do it alone would have made me a very broke girl!

I did it with two on my close girlfriends and although neither of them worked for Banyan, I signed them both up under the Banyan Wings of Hope Team. Funny Things is that out of the 6 people that did participate in the 4Kids, 2 of them were my friends.

So this year, I was really ready to push myself. Not only have I been doing well lately and setting pretty good times, I was feeling good. I had talked my friend into running her first 5K ever…and honestly, I was pretty sure she was going to not only kick my butt, but everyone else’s…girl can run!

We all managed to drag our butts out of bed. We all meet up at the park. We walked around for a bit and decided we would try to pace around 7 min (this is my new goal, since I want to get under 22). And I managed to keep that pace for the most part…I failed a bit towards the end, but all 3 of us still KICKED BUTT!

We each came in first in our age groups!

I came in this year at a time of 22:50. Not the best time I have had recently, but it was good enough to take the gold. After freaking 4 years of doing this race, damn it has become like a tradition for me….and for my friend, who did her 3 year this year. Even though it is not our favorite race, we always seem to run it, and I think we may also do it again next year.

This year the swag was much better and it was much more organized. Last year when we finished the race, they didn’t even have cold water out at the finish line yet or any of the tents set up. But this year, they had their shiznit a little more together.

 

Besides all the religious crap that people kept trying to hand me, it wasn’t too bad, and afterwards I went and put flyers for JWKFA in the cars. Trying to promote my awesome ass kickboxing place as always!

Either way it was a good time and I finally got some good swag at the run!
 

My next race is the Color Run and I am doing it with some friends from JWKFA. I didn’t actually sign up for it because I thought that it was on the same day as the 4Kids, but it wasn’t and someone else bailed and they had an extra entry, so why not.