Monday, December 12, 2011

Ponle Freno 5k

A month or so ago, I heard about a 5k run in Madrid through another blogger. The carrera Ponle Freno is a 5k and 10k race in Madrid to raise money for a campaign for traffic safety. Ponle Freno literally means to "hit the breaks" in Spanish. My friend Christina and I decided to sign up, thinking that having something to train for would motivate us to start working out. Of course this plan backfired, considering we only worked out once, if that, in preparation for the race. But hey, 3.1 miles isn´t so bad, so we decided to follow through with it.


The day before the race, we figured it might be a good idea to find out where the race actually was and how to check in. Go figure, we need to check in at an El Corte Ingles store that´s 40 minutes from my house within 2 hours, and luckily we got there just in time to pick up our size XL shirts and our race chips.

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and headed to Parque del Retiro for the race. Holy crap, it was COLD. The race started a few minutes late and due to poor organization there wasn´t a staggered start, so it took a while to get over the start line and the first half mile was pretty crowded. Once we got going, I had a lot of fun during the run. I didn´t push myself TOO hard because I´m so out of shape, but I kept a pace that felt somewhat challenging. My official race time was 29:10 (9:39 min/mile pace).

I miss running. It´s been a few years since I have run regularly and competed in events... I can´t really call myself a runner anymore. I started training for a half marathon last winter and I didn´t follow through because I increased my mileage too soon and was getting shin splints. Looking at my race time from a couple weeks ago, I can´t believe I was able to run a 20:30 5k at one point. Since the Ponle Freno, I have gone for a run or two, but I haven´t been able to make much time for running. There´s no way I´m waking up for cold, dark 6 am morning runs before work, and I usually don´t get home until dark and running at night here makes me a bit nervous. But hey, excuses don´t get ya anywhere, so I´ll be making an effort to fit running into my schedule. We´re planning to run in the Rock n Roll 10k this Spring, and I´d like to do some solid training for this one and improve my time. I´ll let you all know how it goes! If any of you fellow Madrid folks want to join me for a run sometime, let me know! :)

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