Venice Beach Inaugural 5K

Race season is officially here. Venice Beach held their inaugural 5K/half marathon on Sunday, May 18th with runners sailing along the boardwalk towards Abbott Kinney, before venturing their way up and down Venice Boulevard. Finally, all runners sprinted towards the finish line underneath the Venice sign. I participated in the 5K with a few friends. It’s my first race in almost 2 years, and admittedly, I was out of practice. While I’ve been regularly running on my own, I haven’t competed. However, I’m happy with my finish time of 28 minutes and 38 minutes which is about 9:12 miles. The big surprise was that I came in 46th place for females, and 10th place for women in my age group. These numbers made my day. Over 3,500 runners participated in the half marathon, 5K, kids run and mile dash. What an incredible turnout! I really hope that Venice Beach continues to host this event, because it was great to see the community coming out to support us runners. If they do, I’m already planning on signing up.

My race bib

This 5K is the start of my race season. In June, I’ll begin training for a half marathon taking place in October. I like to train for a few weeks longer than is typical since I like to pace training. The last time I ran a half marathon, I became extremely burnt out, and stopped running for almost 4 months. I’m also planning on participating in the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. Each year, I try to do at least 2 runs per season; however, I didn’t do any runs last year and I realized how much I missed the excitement of racing. I don’t race to win. I race for the pure enjoyment of being active outdoors, and doing something healthy for my body.

Made it to the finish line!