Doin' the Dino Dash ...

The 'Dino', the mascot of the U of C's sports teams

This weekend, I'll be doing the 10 kilometre race at the Rocky Mountain Half Marathon event in Canmore, just inside the Rocky Mountains.  I thought it might be fun to do a 5 kilometre race before then, so I signed up for the Dino Dash which was held on Saturday at the University of Calgary.  I haven't run consistently over the summer and in the past two weeks, I'd only done one run, so I wasn't really prepared for the race.  I didn't even have a race plan, not having done a 5km before and unsure about how fast I could realistically run.  So, I set myself a target of finishing in under 30 minutes and off I went.  Wow.  The pace was cracking from the start and for the first kilometre I had a mental debate with myself, 'Could I maintain this pace?' or 'Should I slow down?'  I ended up dropping my pace a little which meant I could maintain it and still get a little faster at the end.  But, it was fast considering I hadn't done much training and when I came into the athletic track (which kind of felt like the Olympics, finishing with a lap of the track!), I faded and struggled to maintain my pace, crossing the finish line in 25 minutes and searching around for a rubbish bin in case I needed to spew.  But, despite that, the Dino Dash was a lot of fun and I'll definitely be entering it again next year!  (After I'd finished writing this, the results were published and I was thrilled to see that I won my age/gender group!)