Race Report: Mama Bear 5K

Mama Bear 5K - Atlanta - Heather's been planning on running Mama Bear for awhile and I toyed with it... but was totally not sure what I was doing with my life this weekend! I finally decided to sign up and give it a whirl since I'd be down in Atlanta on Friday night anyway (weekend recap post coming up!). I also figured this would be a good excuse for the May #runchat challenge: run a new course! Well, I've never run in Atlanta. Ever.

Saturday morning was supposed to be something like 70 degrees (perfect!) ... with 100% humidity (ewwww). But regardless, when we headed out Saturday morning, it was gorgeous. Warm-ish, but a gorgeous morning. We met up with Heather's friend, Pri, who brought along another Megan (yay!). Pri hasn't run a 5K in awhile, and was pretty unsure about the whole experience. We realized this was Heather's sixth 5K of the year (yeeaaaaah HP), and while we were chillin' and stretching, made another friend, Holly (hi Holly!), and started talking about running, and racing and half marathons. It's really fun to talk with folks and realizee that kind of, even if only kind of, I know what I'm talking about a little bit! Legitmacy, for the win.

Pretty, pretty course. Tree and mansion-lined the whole way through!

Heather ran this course in February or so, so she thankfully knew that while it was a mostly fast course, there was a beast of a hill around the first mile marker, then mostly flat, and just before the end a lesser hill but enough to make you work for it. I originally planned to just hang out and take it easy, but you know how I work -- eventually I just take off. I paced myself pretty well up until Beast Hill, managed to jog the whole way up, puttered around around the halfway mark, and then walk/jogged the last half. At some point, I was chugging along at an 8:30 mile and realize I'd die if I tried to finish the race that fast so finally dropped back a little bit and finished off.

Uh yeah. Ew. Brutal enough for a 5K!

I got to cheer Holly in (new PR for her!), and Heather in (course PR!) and then we cheered in Heather's new running friends, and then came Megan. Heather and I went to go find Pri and bring her in and ran her back all the way in! Afterwards we hung around for a little while, cheering in folks, talking, and generally trying not to die in the heat.

3.16 miles = 31:39"

We did it!

Finally... pancakes!

For a small race, they had a good amount of sponsors and support -- few local running companies and freebies. Bagels, Powerade, race coupons.. some good stuff! The race neighborhood was beautiful, treed and almost completely shaded the whole way through! A great race!

Given that I haven't trained much lately either, I'm pretty content. Not a bad time for those hills and having gotten much of a run in lately! Not bad.