Firecracker 5k on 4th of July

These holiday 5ks are turning into a thing.  Mother's day, father's day, and now 4th of July.  This time Matt and I both ran, along with most of my family (mom, dad, sarah, jeremy, liz, devin, and even my uncle john).  And a big thank you to Rebecca and my Aunt Shirley who watched the kids while we were running!  Everyone did really well, and despite the huge crowd (2500 runners starting in Reston Town Center), it was a good race.  Uncle John blew us all away finishing in about 24 minutes, but then again he's doing an Iron Man in August, so he's really on top of this.  Jeremy finished next in about 33 mins... and I came in shortly after that with a new record time of 33:28!  I could hardly believe it!  It puts my mile pace at 10:51.  What?  I ran 3 miles in under 11 minutes each????  I'm really happy with my time and I could definitely tell that my training has been paying off.  I mean, even when I was running several years ago I could barely run 1 mile in 11 minutes without dying.  So this is big progress.  I definitely pushed myself this time, I tried to really push my pace the whole time, but at one point, when I saw the 2 mile marker I slowed down for a few minutes.  And then I tried to do a little sprint to the finish at the last turn because someone was yelling about how "once you make this turn you're there, the finish line is right there!!!!"  And i thought... "sprint now Jessica, push push push"  So I did, then I turned the corner and the finish like was like 300 meters away and it was on an incline and I had already increased my pace quite a bit, so I didn't totally maintain my last push, but I still finished strong.

Oh I also made sure not to look like I was dying whenever I saw the event photographers... not that it mattered though because the only photo I appear in... in over 3000 pictures posted to the flickr account, was in the kid's 100 meter fun run that Matt and I did with Dylan.  Darn, I was really hoping for a "good" running photo.  Mostly so I could compare it to this TERRIBLE one from the Mother's Day 4 miler.  Oh well, maybe next time.

Oh and just because they exist, here are some good shots of Dylan's fun run:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/potomacriverrunning/9208490139/in/set-72157634478769281
http://www.flickr.com/photos/potomacriverrunning/9208490739/in/set-72157634478769281/