Dean Karnazes Silicon Valley 5k

Another weekend, another race (my 9th!), and a smashing new personal record! The Dean Karnazes Silicon Valley 5k started before the crack of dawn this morning. We took the Lightrail to downtown San Jose at 6 am (owwww) and got there just in time to see the main event, the half and full marathons start.

Look! It's Dean Karnazes, world famous Ultramarathon Man! We've seen his documentary, but it was especially interesting to meet him since I just finished the book Born to Run, which doesn't paint him in the most favorable light.



Anyways, we met at the race expo yesterday. Our conversation went something like this:

Amy: I'm still a beginner, but you're quite an inspiration.
Dean: I'm still a beginner too [ha!]
Andy: She made me run a half marathon!
Dean: Oh, so YOU'RE the bad influence, huh? Are you going to run a full now?
Amy: ....um.....hi?

This 5k seemed sort of like an afterthought for the race organizers; it was obvious that the full and half were the big deal. Which was totally fine, I'm just happy to have had the opportunity to be a part of such a large local running event. The course was amazingly flat, but the scenery... um... left something to be desired. It weaved through a pretty small section of downtown San Jose, past water reclamation areas, under littered bridges, and down random seedy streets. Again, didn't really mind, it was more about running a race than sightseeing for me this morning.

This part at the very beginning (and end) was nice!


And... wow. I smashed my PR (previously 45:15), and I am so excited about it! I never, ever thought I'd see any numbers like this. I know I claim to not get hung up on times and numbers, but... well.. yeah. I'm really, really happy.



For some reason, this race was extremely emotional for me. Watching the half and full runners race past the starting line had me in tears, blubbering to Andy at 7 am about how I love racing and how these people are so brave to take on this challenge and blah blah blah. I don't really know what came over me, but it was there throughout the 5k too. I got teary eyed at least 3 separate times on the course, mostly when a song would come on my playlist that reminded me of our half marathon and trigger some overwhelming emotion. It was the good kind of emotion, though. The kind that made me hold my head up, push myself, and have some crazy fun doing it.