Race Recap: Hot Trot 5K

Hey friends!

Today I ran the LuLu’s Hot Trot for ARC 5K. This race was my first official race recap when I started the blog last summer, so I’ve come full circle now. Sweet!

I always like to compare race times from year to year to see how my fitness has changed over the years. Hot Trot is a really good one to use, because the conditions are always the same (i.e., hot and humid). A quick walk down memory lane revealed that this was my 4th time to run this race! It is definitely one of my favorite races of the year. There aren’t many other races in June, so I’m usually itching to do a race and it’s at the beach. You can’t really beat that.

A quick summary of previous years:
2012 – 19:56. The year of my inaugural Hot Trot. Finished (barely) under 20 minutes.
2013 – 19:35. The year Rebecca and I first pulled the #twinning stunt and I won an hourglass. Super unique prize!
2014 – No race. I don’t remember why we didn’t do the race this year, other than Daniel was probably working.
2015 – 20:50. The year of the 3.25 mile 5K.

Now that we are caught up on previous Hot Trot races, let’s talk about this year’s race. Daniel had to work again this weekend, which stinks. He was definitely missed. I don’t like going to races without Daniel. Thankfully, lots of our friends were there so I had some buddies to play with!

In fact, it was basically a mini Ragnar reunion, which was perfect because our medals came in the mail this week and I was able to give out over half of them today. We all got two more medals! One for first place regular overall and one for first place mixed (co-ed) open.

A storm blew through our area late Friday night and brought a little reprieve from the super intense heat and humidity. All the runners were so thankful! Saturday morning was by far the coolest morning in the last couple of weeks. Don’t get me wrong, it was still pretty toasty, but it could’ve been much worse.

It was a pretty early wake up call. The race starts at 7:30, but it is about an hour drive and we wanted to get there by 6:30 ish to get our packets and get a warm up in before the race. I caught a ride with Jill and Mitch and we pulled into LuLu’s right at 6:30. The day was off to a good start!

We got our packets, did a two mile warm up and some strides and then it was go time.

I ran the first mile with Steve and Young Daniel (two of my Ragnar teammates). We came through in 6:18. I was expecting to be a little bit quicker than that, but that’s where we settled in, so I just went with it. After mile one Steve picked it up and I decided to hang with him as long as I could. He is a very smart racer and always negative splits his race, so I knew the next miles would be faster.

Sure enough, I came through mile two in 5:54. I mean, I knew we were going to pick it up, but wowza 24 seconds was a lot! Steve was already a little bit ahead of me at this point and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to run another mile at that pace. I ran the last mile by myself in 6:02.

I ended up as the 6th overall finisher and 1st female. My official time was 19:05, which is a 30 second course PR. I’m definitely happy with that!

They had ice-cold towels for everyone at the finish, which was really nice. A few of us went for a two mile cool down and then walked over to the post race party.

The post race party is at LuLu’s, which is the perfect venue. The restaurant isn’t open yet, so it’s basically a private runners-only party. We hung out for a little while and got our awards.

The awards (3 deep per age group) are usually coffee mugs. I look forward to getting a mug each year. They are the best, basically because they hold a lot of coffee! I also got a medal and a trophy this year. It’s a shoe with wings (symbol of the Greek god Hermes). Too cute!

After the race I went out on the boat with Jessica and her family. We went to Gumbo Key, which is basically a floating musical concert in Orange Beach, AL. It was a beautiful day to be on the water!

Daniel got off work in time to meet us for a little bit. I was happy to see him!

Today was so much fun! I know I’m going to sleep so well tonight.