Lawyers Have Heart 5K

As some of you will remember, I ran my first 5K in April as one of the items on by 30 by 30 list. I felt really proud after finishing my first race and I instantly decided that I would love to do more races in the future. I kept running on a regular basis in April and May, and even signed up to do a four mile race at the end of May. I ended up skipping that race when I unexpectedly had a memorial service to attend to in Philadelphia. Since then, I haven’t been running as much as I’d like to but this didn’t stop me from joining my firm’s team for the Lawyers Have Heart 5K!

The race took place last Thursday and started out at the Bank of America Pavilion on the waterfront.

I started the race with one of my co-workers and we ran together at a good pace for about half of the course. I lost a lot of motivation at the second half of the course when we started running in the middle of parking lots to add mileage to the 5K. Imagine running loops in an asphalt parking lot in the middle of the summer. Yeah, it was that fun.

Overall, the race went terribly for me. I ran really slowly and finished at 34:04 – almost two minutes longer than the B.A.A. 5K. I was really disappointed in myself because I knew that I could have tried harder. Despite my complaints about the course, I recognize that my biggest problem was just being out of shape. I’ve only run a handful of times during the month of June for a myriad of reasons – cold, rainy weather; my allergies; blistering hot weather; my new work schedule; and more recently, my never-ending battle with heat rash. No matter what the reason, if I want to get better at running, I really need to do it more consistently. So, I’m planning on devoting some more time to running and finding a more fun course to do in the fall.

The only thing that cheered me up was that I at least raised money for a really good cause – the American Heart Association. And I wanted to thank those of you who supported my run with a donation because it really meant a lot!