Jingle all the way

Downtown Houston was filled with ringing jingle bells Sunday afternoon as 1000 runners jogged through the streets with red and green foam antlers on their heads and bells on their feet. This past weekend I ran in the annual Jingle Bell Run with one of my best friends growing up, Sara.

In high school we ran cross-country and track together. And by "ran together" I mean literally ran together. Especially our freshman year, our coach must have thought we were joined at the hip! Inseparable. We crossed practically every finish line side by side. In fact, I distinctly remember one 2 mile race on the track where we ran the whole way together. We were just behind the 2nd place girl. I was so excited that we would tie for 3rd. 3rd! Just as we were about to cross the finish line together in triumph, Sara leaned forward. I remember thinking "What is she doing?" That little bitty lean was all the difference between 3rd and 4th. I didn't know you could lean! It didn't really matter anyway because I was pretty proud of that 4th place ribbon. I think it was the first time I "placed" in a track meet.

Running together this weekend brought back a lot of great memories. The race was 5 miles, the farthest distance I had run probably since high school. Audrey and I had been practicing the last few weeks working up to 4.5 miles, so I felt pretty good.

I managed to keep up with Sara (who is training for a half-marathon by the way!) most of the way. After the half-way point she got about 20 feet ahead of me or so. I slowly caught back up with her and finished only 1.5 seconds behind. I was so excited. It was really fun and I felt really really good.

You can see our official results on the web: overall and by age group. My goal was to run the race in 45 minutes or under which works out to 9 minutes per mile. I ran it in 42:34.30, which is about an 8:30 pace. I'm no where near an Olympic pace, but I'm pretty proud of my time. I made my goal!

During the race I wore my iPod and Nike sensor to track my running. You can see from my running profile below that it wasn't exactly the steadiest pace, but it got the job done. Running underneath those overpasses with a bit of wind is harder than you think. Anyway, I'm pretty jazzed and ready to tackle the next race. I think a 10K is in order.